Ben Macintyre's World War II Espionage Files

Praise

Praise for Agent Zigzag

“Macintyre is the more graceful writer; Agent Zigzag has a clarity and shape that make it the more fluid account… I would give a personal nod to Macintyre’s as the better book… A review cannot possibly convey the sheer fun of this story… or the fascinating moral complexities.”—New York Times Book Review

“[Agent Zigzag’s] incredible wartime adventures, recounted in Ben Macintyre’s rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag blend the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carré with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh.” — New York Times

“Eddie Chapman was a patriot, in his fashion, and this excellent book finally does him justice.” —Washington Post Book World

“Fact sounds like fast-moving fiction in this espionage saga of a man who was probably the most improbable double agent to emerge in World War II. … The author has written an enormously fascinating book about an enormously fascinating man.”
—Washington Times

“[R]ichly descriptive, marvelously illuminating, and just plain brilliant… a masterpiece.”
—Boston Globe

“Chapman’s life had more hair’s–breath escapes than find in ten Ian Fleming novels.” –Details

“Macintyre [relates] his compellingly cinematic spy thriller with verve.” —Entertainment Weekly (an “EW Pick”)

“A portrait of a man who double-crossed not only the Nazis, but just about every other principle and person he encountered. In doing so, Eddie Chapman made all thriller writers’ jobs harder, because this spy tale trumps any fiction.” —Men’s Journal

“Agent Zigzag is a true-history thriller, a real spy story superbly written. It belongs to my favorite genre: the ‘Friday night book’–start it then, because you will want to stay with it all weekend.” —Alan Furst

“Superb. Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely entertaining and often very moving.”—John le Carré

“One of the most extraordinary stories of the Second World War.”—Sunday Telegraph
 
Praise for Operation Mincemeat

“Here, finally, is the complete story with its full cast of characters (not a dull one among them), pure cathnip to fans of World War II thrillers and a lot of fun for everyone else.”—Washington Post Book World

“Brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining…The cast of characters involved in Mincemeat, as the caper was called, was extraordinary, and Macintyre tells their stories with gusto.”—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

“OPERATION MINCEMEAT is utterly, to employ a dead word, thrilling. But to call it thus is to miss the point slightly in terms of admiring it properly….What makes OPERATION MINCEMEAT so winning, in addition to Mr. Macintyre’s meticulous research and the layers of his historical understanding, is his elegant, jaunty, and very British high style.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times

“Macintyre, whose previous book chronicled the incredible exploits of Eddie Chapman, the crook turned spy known as Zigzag, excels at this sort of twisted narrative….Great fun.” —Jennet Conant, New York Times Book Review

“A nearly flawless true-life picaresque…zeroes in on one of the few times in war history when excessive literary imagination, instead of hobbling a clandestine enterprise, worked beyond its authors’ wildest dream….Almost inedibly rich with literary truffles—doppelgangers, obsession, transgression, self-fashioning….It is hard to overstate how cinematic this story really was.”—New Republic

“Another true WWII tale that reads like something by Ian Fleming….the fullest account yet.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Fascinating…and it’s all true.”—Seattle Times

“Fascinating … The complexities and consequences of the story that Macintyre tells in OPERATION MINCEMEAT are compelling – a tribute to his impressive abilities as a sleuth (ones that we’ve witnessed in his previous books) and to his capacities as a writer. He has the instincts of a novelist rather than a historian when it comes to elision, exposition, narrative and pace, and is depiction of character is vividly alive to nuance and idiosyncrasy.”—William Boyd, The Times [London]