It's been awhile since I contributed anything, but I'll try
to measure up to William Denton report standards on Matt Helm
#s. Read #13, The Poisoners
(1971, 224 pages). For me also, several years since I read
one.
Matt is called away from a N Mexico vacation, during which
time he seems to go all over the state in search of good
fishing. (Do any of the series ever SHOW him fishing?) Much
is made of his knowing how to get around in rough
Southwestern terrain throughout the novel, as contrasted to
citybred heavies he encounters.
He is ordered to go to LA after Annette O'Leary, a redheaded
agent who apparently survived an earlier adventure, is
seriously wounded. Helm is ordered to find the murderer and
deal with him/her, showing extreme prejudice. It seems too
easy when a local crime boss brings him in and hands him a
gun to shoot one of his own men, because he mistakenly shot
her.
On the way back, he stops a mugging of a pretty
girl who "confesses" that she is the one the local crime boss
meant to rub out, and he's still after her (please protect,
please).
All that's just the beginning of a plot that involves a plot
to terrorize through air pollution, funded by the Chinese,
headed by one Mr. Soo (also in a repeat appearance, I
gather), and connected to one Nicholas, jokingly called Santa
Claus (by Helm), another villain from the past. From LA, we
go to Mexico, a few beatings and shootings later, to New
Mexico for the climax.
As many have noted, Hamilton is quite good in setting up
action sequences
(especially in complicated terrain), leaving room for Helm to
make some moral decisions, in keeping with his code. Although
this novel had too many longish conversations speculating
motives, plans, or likely outcomes--struck me as a bit like a
cozy--Hamilton can accelerate nicely. And sometimes he writes
some good figurative passages, such as the following: "...the
plane began to lose altitude. We descended into something
that looked like a giant basket of dirty laundry--the smog
clouds trapped by the coastal mountains--and discovered, to
my considerable relief, that there was an airport under the
grimy looking mess." LA in the 1970s. If it seems a bit fancy
for a Matt Helm, it has a direct tie-in to the plot that
develops.
Bill Hagen
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