Here were all the makings of a popular book. To Ben Macintyre and Nicholas Booth, both seasoned London journalists, the chance to tell the full Eddie Chapman story at last proved irresistible. Then, in 2001, MI5 declassified his file, with more than 1,700 pages of interrogation transcripts, internal memorandums and radio intercepts - a trove of detailed information, catnip to anyone interested in wartime espionage. This book led, in turn, to a dim 1967 film, “Triple Cross.” And during the postwar years, readers of the London press could follow the wealthy “gentleman crook” through a series of escapades.īy the time of his death in 1997, however, Chapman’s notoriety had faded.

A 1966 update, “The Real Eddie Chapman Story,” tells more, but guardedly.

In 1954 he published “The Eddie Chapman Story,” memoirs so eviscerated by the Official Secrets Act that his work for MI5 is not even mentioned (a gap that led some readers to conclude he had been only a German spy). Ben Macintyre says he could look you “straight in the eye” while he picked your pocket.Ĭhapman has surfaced before. One of his girlfriends thought Eddie looked like Errol Flynn certainly Flynn could have played him. His is a spy drama in the classic manner, complete with secret codes, invisible ink and parachute drops, cyanide capsules, sexy blondes (named Dagmar, no less) and a dashing hero. But even by World War II standards, the exploits of Eddie Chapman, a professional Soho criminal turned double agent for the Germans and the British, are extraordinary.

It’s rare that a single war story inspires two books in the same season.

Agent zig zag