Google Books shows the title as two words (Zig Zag), but as near as I can tell the book uses the one word version (Zigzag). It appears that Noel Hynd has written several similar books.
Not a particularly great book. An entertaining read, but not much substance. A potboiler, if you will. (I've heard the word "potboiler" many times, and this time I looked it up. The origins are interesting.) Good to have a break from the internet.
The hero, a writer of some talent (!?!), is something of a jerk. Whenever he is dealing with his friends, he is pleasant enough, but whenever he has to deal with other people, he is rude and obnoxious. This put me off a bit, I don't need any of that, but I still kept coming back. I rationalized that people do behave like that, so maybe the book is being realistic. What puzzles me is how it can be such a bad book and at the same time be entertaining and easy to read. Perhaps it's a bit like an action/adventure movie. There is always something happening, it may not make any sense in the larger storyline, but something is going on, and the story teller is clear enough that you can follow along. Kind of like a roller coaster that way, you go looping through all these bizarre twists and turns and it's very thrilling while you are there, but when it's all over you are back where you started.
Something else that puzzles me is that there are so many writers trying to get their book published, and something like this becomes a mass market paperback. Well, I guess that's what the market wants. After all, I bought a copy, and I enjoyed it. I suspect if Noel wanted to, he could write a much better book, but this one was easy to write.
Didn't hurt my brain either, but then I refrained from looking up all the real spies and spy hunters mentioned in the book. You could hurt yourself doing that.
Update January 2017 replaced missing image.
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