Agent Zig Zag by Ben Macintyre

Agent Zigzag: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy

by Ben Macintyre

Bloomsbury £7.99

Ben Macintyre, a quite superb writer, has a knack of unearthing gems of stories. A previous book, A Foreign Field, told the remarkable tale of four British soldiers given sanctuary in a French village during the First World War after being marooned behind enemy lines. Now he has told the equally remarkable story of Second World War double agent Eddie Chapman.

Chapman, a criminal, sybarite and serial philanderer, found himself on Jersey when the Germans invaded and was transferred to a hellhole of a prison in Paris. The only way out of this benighted existence was to volunteer his services to the Abwehr as a secret agent. Eventually accepted, he was then parachuted into England, where he promptly landed flat on his face and then swiftly handed himself over to the police and volunteered to become a secret agent.

Get the picture? This was a man who first and foremost was driven by self-interest. Yet, as Macintyre makes clear, Chapman was not that simple a character. He developed a genuine affection for his Abwehr controllers. As for his many female conquests, he always professed undying affection, an emotion that was uniformly reciprocated.

Even his British secret service superiors, who, correctly, treated him initially with hostility and suspicion, succumbed to his undoubted charm and ability. Only when he volunteered to assassinate Hitler and go out in a blaze of glory did they curb his patent enthusiasm for espionage. That he was eventually sacked as an agent owed far more to another man's jealousy than to Chapman's failings.

Ben Macintyre tells Chapman's story with panache, affection and tremendous wit. In the course of Agent Zigzag, there are many charming and touching vignettes, none more so than the case of Praetorius, one of Chapman's Abwehr minders. A fan of all things English, but especially folk dancing, Praetorius eventually left the secret service and was appointed dance instructor to the Wehrmacht in the middle of the war. It makes you wonder why it took so long for the Germans to lose.

Lee Child The Affair a Jack Reacher story

The world is now divided into three clear and distinct groups: (a) those who are – like me – fans of Lee Child; (b) those who have not yet read Lee Child and have therefore not yet fallen in love with his hulking, kindly, killer hero Jack Reacher; (c) the pompous snobs who, although mentally and physically dwarfed by Lee Child, claim some kind of pseudo-aesthetic superiority over him on the grounds that he is a "genre" writer. I feel I ought to write three short reviews for these different constituencies.

(1) For friends and fans: the good news is that The Affair is Child on top of his game. It could well be his best book yet. It you were rocked by the news that Tom Cruise (relatively lightweight) is going to play the part of (heavyweight) Reacher in the movie adaptation of One Shot, then this new novel will reassure you that Reacher remains entirely undiminished. After two abstemious outings (61 Hours and Worth Dying For), Jack makes up for lost time with his most explicit sex scenes yet, involving not just the lovely Elizabeth Deveraux (sheriff of Carter Crossing) but a midnight train thundering towards either oblivion or ecstasy.

(2) New readers: Child has already written 15 utterly beguiling novels in the Jack Reacher series. But this could be the perfect one to start with. The Affair is a first-person narrative so that you get to know the thoughts and feelings of our hero.

This is a genesis story, harking back to the moment at which he really becomes Reacher, giving up his career as a military cop and turning into a fair but firm (extremely firm) vigilante and drifter. In this adventure, he starts off by going into training for his future life, going undercover, growing his hair long, stopping shaving, and adopting his minimalist way with luggage, packing only a toothbrush.

(3) The enemies of Reacher: certain blinkered readers (especially critics) suppose that simply because a writer conjures up several murders and a certain amount of mayhem (in one scene Reacher neatly decks six ill-disposed locals), and tends towards a compact declarative style, then he automatically drops off the literary radar. But consider this: The Affair has – despite all the manifest machismo – a distinctly Proustian feel. Reacher is recollecting and re-interpreting a lost period in his life, which turns out to be the key to understanding his mentality. Although punctuated by bursts of explosive intensity, this novel has a long, contemplative arc, weaving backwards to 1997 and then forwards again to an indeterminate point that may be now. The paradox of Reacher is that he is both a great big grizzly bear of a fighter, who is liable to knock your head off you if you look sideways at him, and a thinker, both Schwarzanegger and Socrates. Make love and war is his credo.

The Russian Court at Sea by Frances Welch

It is well known that the Romanov dynasty in Imperial Russia came to a sad end.  After the February revolution of 1917, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were placed under house arrest and in July 1918, the Bolshevik authorities shot Nicholas and his immediate family and servants in the cellar of the house they were staying in.  They had been told that they were to be photographed to prove to the people that they were still alive and once they had been arranged for the photograph, they were shot by the very people who were supposed to be protecting them.

Frances Welch has written a fine “what happened next” book in The Russian Court at Sea   describing the escape from Russia of the remaining members of the Romanov tribe as they departed Russia from the Ukraine port of Yalta on the British ship HMS Marlborough.  The party consisted of the Tsar’s mother, The Dowager Empress Marie and his sister, the Grand Duchess Xenia and fifteen others, including the man who killed Rasputin, Prince Felix Youssoupov.

The Romanov party was far from being one happy family.  At least two squabbling factions were represented, and the British crew seemed bemused by the intricacies of the social relationships among the Russians.  First Lieutenant Pridham had been led to expect a party of twelve and was taken aback at having to accommodate fifty refugees.  The crew gallantly freed up all 35 officers’ cabins and commandeered additional mattresses and sheets as they could find them.  Indeed, the Tsarina’s lady in waiting wrote in her diary,


All the officers had cleared their cabins and let us have them, while they themselves were content to sleep in the hold.  When I lay in my bunk, I could see “my host’s” family portraits all around me and many small keepsakes from his loved ones at home.


After the terrible events arising from the revolution, including the mass slaughter of other members of the family and the flight into the Ukraine is must have been a relief to find such hospitality on-board a British ship, even though at the time of embarkation they did not know where they were going.

Fortunately the Dowager and Princess Xenia had Anglophile tendencies and had visited Britain (The Dowager was the sister in law of King Edward VII) and we well-disposed to the officers and crew – who reciprocated with a degree of deference only to be expected towards royal guests.  The family had brought with them incalculable riches including rolled-up Rembrandts, jewellery and silver.

A good relationship developed between the officers and their Russian passengers as the Marlborough sailed to Malta, where they finally parted company.  They were impressed by the beauty of the island and were accommodated in a fine house belonging to the British government, San Antonio, Prince Dmitri writing,

The grounds were full of orange tress and we were able to pick and eat the choicest fruit.  The palace was reputed to be haunted not by one but by several ghosts including a phantom grey cat.  Meals were taken together at a long table and our Maltese butler would solemnly announce at the end of each meal “port or marsala” which always amused me.


Life in exile was never to equal that of a Royal family in their home country.  They arrived in London and were greeted by King George and Queen Mary but although the Dowager tried to with her sister Alix at Marlbourough House, the two elderly ladies did not get on and she decided to return to Denmark.  Even there life was difficult at times and her nephew King Christian was “particularly disagreeable”, at one point telling her to turn off lights as she was using too much electricity.

Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna

Princess Xenia remained in England at the King’s expense but was troublesome to the end, eventually being exiled to Wilderness House at Hampton Court.  The young English Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were quite taken with their Russian relation, “merrily singing the Volga Boat Song whenever they passed Xenia’s house”.

The research that went into this book is impeccable, and the list of sources is impressive.  Frances Welch evidently found many useful contacts while researching the book and translated documents from French and German.  While the voyage is perhaps a footnote in history, is is always interesting to have small events recreated in this way, revealing as they do many different aspects on greater issues.  I particularly liked the way in which the author followed up the history of the officers and their passengers right up to the 1970s and 80s (Marina died in 1981).

Maigret in Court By Georges Simenon

In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt's throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant's life. A painful story of an oppressive domestic tragedy and the compassionate insight of a remarkable detective.

'A truly wonderful writer ... marvellously readable - lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with that world he creates of run-down hotels, cold, dark barges, quayside canal-taverns, lurking prostitutes, pot-bellied burghers, taciturn youths, slippery barmen' - 

The Seance, a Victorian Mystery by John Harwood

It is sometimes remarked that inanimate objects can have such a strong presence within a story that the object almost becomes one of the characters. I think this is certainly true of the sinister Wraxford Hall. This crumbling manor house has accrued its reputation down the years thanks to its eccentric inhabitants and its location. Its spooky setting amidst overgrown grounds and the surrounding sprawl of woodlands, known as Monks Wood, has caused the local poachers to pursue their game elsewhere. A pack of vicious hounds is said to roam the area and the ghost of a monk is believed to haunt the woods. Anyone who sees the spectre is reputed to die within the month.

`The Seance' is John Harwood's second novel and is set in Victorian England. Events unfold through pages of narrative seen from the perspectives of three of the story's main characters: Constance Langton, John Montague and Eleanor Unwin.

Constance's distraught mother is inconsolable following the death of Constance's sister. In desperation, Constance and her mother attend a seance in the hope of providing some much needed comfort. John Montague is a barrister and amateur artist who is charged with tracing the heir of Wraxford Hall. Montague decides to commit the hall to canvas and on taking up his brushes, finds himself suffused with artistic powers that he had not, previously or since, possessed. Eleanor Unwin suffers from blinding headaches and an overbearing mother. Her headaches are the result of so-called visitations from the dead.

The social niceties of the time are particularly well drawn in the women's narratives and journals. Unchaperoned ladies and unsuitable husband material are almost as much to be feared as the manor house that binds the various characters. Eleanor's toxic mother is especially outraged when marriage to an artist threatens to heap social stigma on her family.

The scenes in and around Wraxford Hall are deliciously creepy. The weather-staples of Victorian mystery stories - the bone-chilling cold, swirling mists and lightning - are much in evidence as the protagonists attempt to uncover the secrets that they and the house share.

If you've already enjoyed John Harwood's excellent first novel, `The Ghostwriter', or, if Victorian-era mystery stories are your thing, you won't want to miss `The Seance'. This is a compelling and highly atmospheric novel from a superb writer. 

The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This is the first Sherlock Holmes book I have read in full and it will be my last. Although a good but not great story, it was very long winded and could have been much shorter. The language used set it in its time. Glad that I have read at least one but not upset that there will be no more.