Customer Reviews

The Terrorizers

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When Matt Helm wakes up in a hospital in Canada he has no idea who he is. A beautiful woman visits and tells him he is her fiance and his name is Paul Madden. He receives an anonymous phone call telling him his name is Helm and the action begins. He is kidnapped and tortured by the bad guys and despised by the good guys. All in a days work though as Matt goes into action. Plenty of suspense, intrique, and mind-bending twists to this fabulous story by Donald Hamilton.

THE TERRORIZERS is a top ten Matt Helm book. The other nine are Citizen, Removers, Murderers' Row, Ambushers, Devastators, Betrayers, Menacers, Interlopers and Terminators. 27 total were published. I remember TERRORIZERS being in the stores almost immediately on the heels of the previous episode THE RETALIATORS.

THE TERRORIZERS is rollicking pulp fun; Eric battles terrorists in Canada while, just to ramp up the fun meter a notch, suffering amnesia. Helm literally has to divine what diabolical menace he's pitted against. Helm's at his witty best in TERRORIZERS, after the bad guys beat the tar out of him with blunt instruments he, with great detachment, remarks: "Then we moved to electricity." Also I grinned at Helm's wry list of the terrorists' crimes to the reader: 'this explosion, that bombing and "the Toronto Railroad bang."'

Author extraordinaire Donald Hamilton's wit and economy were integral cornerstones in the Matt Hem foundation making the books as unformulaic and readable as they (still) are.

THE TERRORIZERS marked the eighteenth Eric & Mac book Hamilton published and it marks the end of an era. After this volume Hamilton would not man the helm again for another five years.

When he relocated the Helm muse Hamilton had to almost double the word count of his books to justify their much higher current cost to the reader, almost twice the $1.75 price of THE TERRORIZERS in its first paperback run. The three prior to that cost $1.25 and $1.50 respectively; THE INTRIGUERS #14 was the last Helm book one could buy under a dollar. When I first started reading Matt Helm books I bought better ones for 40 and 50 cents. Those last nine bloated tales from 1982 till 1993 loosened the flawlessly taut wire of suspense running through the 18 earlier works.

That's what killed the series for me.

Six of the early Helm books aren't even novels by strict definition, they're novellas. CITIZEN, SILENCERS, MURDERERS' ROW, AMBUSHERS, SHADOWERS and RAVAGERS all qualify as novellas because their word count is under 40,000. I'd gladly pay $50 for 40,000 of Hamilton's words in a row all crisp and concise, but not for 100,000 of them.