The Poisoners

Paint-by-numbers entry in the Matt Helm series. Not as ridiculous as the Menacers, but only a frail excuse for a real plot. Hamilton re-uses all his tricks from previous books: the bad guys talking too much in front of Helm; the sympathetic good/bad women; Helm letting himself be captured and beaten up so he can get to the source of the problem, etc. Only Helm's character and interior thought processes make this one worth reading.

If you are looking for good, solid hardboiled espionage fiction without fancy gadgets and worldwide megalomaniacs, look no further than Hamilton's excellent Matt Helm series. In 27 volumes which do seem surprisingly to get better as the series goes on, Hamilton takes a reluctant G-man who thought after the war he could settle down with a family in Santa Fe and turns him into a cynical, professional soldier for a super secret spy agency/ hit squad.

This volume, which is about midway through the series, takes Helm from some well-earned R & R fishing in the Mountains of New Mexico and sends him to Los Angeles to find out who shot a fellow agent, the redheaded knockout with the code name Ruby, and to wreak vengeance if it could be done show more cleanly and quietly. On the way, Helm gets caught between two warring Mafia factions, enticed by one femme fatale after another, tricked, captured, and led on a chase through the bars and roads of Baja.

It's a fast moving, well-executed plot that feels more akin to a hardboiled detective novel than a James Bond espionage story. Indeed, his meetings with the various hoods are straight out of hardboiled pulp studio A.

Although this is a great series, this novel in particular seems to be particularly well written. It's as if Hamilton got comfortable with this character and finally knew exactly what to do with him. show less

Not bad, but not my favorite in this series. One of the few times his basic plot is forced, IMO.