The Wrecking Crew [Paperback]

Donald Hamilton (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett Crest (1950)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000HQ62LI
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific spy thriller, September 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Wrecking Crew (Mass Market Paperback)

Matt Helm is sent to Sweden to kill a mysterious Soviet agent. The only drawback is that until he finds the master spy, he's ordered not to use lethal methods to defend himself. Hamilton keeps the villain's identity hidden well while throwing several obstacles into his protagonist's path. The 2nd in the series, some of the set pieces that will become Hamilton/Helm trademarks are already in place-the treacherous women, the rival agencies and the outdoors location- are familiar to any devoted Hamilton reader.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great Matt Helm thriller, February 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Wrecking Crew (Mass Market Paperback)

Matt Helm's marriage is gone, so he's back to his old line of work, hunting game that can shoot back. He's old, slow, and out of shape -- the perfect condition for what his spy-master boss Mac has in mind. Matt is off to Sweden to find Caselius, an enemy agent worth two armored divisions.

3.0 out of 5 stars Reworked retread?, December 24, 2011

By 

D. Crawford "Swordsman" (Blighty) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: THE WRECKING CREW BY DONALD HAMILTON 1963 (Paperback)

I started reading the Matt Helm novels in 1965, before Dean Martin, when THE DEVASTATORS was new on the shelves. That is a much better book however than the one being reviewed: THE WRECKING CREW. WRECKING CREW isn't a bad story, it contains the requisite action, femme fatale and Mac (my favorite character in spy fiction), the necessary base ingredients for any Helm outing. I've read every novel in the series at least twice except for final ones numbered 19 through 27 (once was enough), but in THE WRECKING CREW Eric's voice just doesn't sound right to me. It's off the way Robert B. Parker's is off when doing a Marlowe pastiche (which is not to say Parker didn't do a good Chandler impersonation, he did!).

THE REMOVERS, the third in the series, reads more like the sequel to DEATH OF A CITIZEN than this second entry. My theory is DEATH OF A CITIZEN started life as a standalone book and Fawcett told Hamilton they wanted a series about Helm's shadow world. I can just imagine them ordering him to fire up the production line and crank 'em out. My belief is THE WRECKING CREW was either the current book Hamilton was writing or a reject from the past. He'd never written a series character before and just changed some names and called THE WRECKING CREW the second Helm volume before getting to work on THE REMOVERS.

I give THE WRECKING CREW three stars, but measured only against the spectrum of the first 18 Helms, after THE TERRORIZERS #18 the series died despite nine more published works. Helm's suspenseful adventures thrived in a 140 to 190 page format. In the latter volumes Hamilton had to add 100 or 150 more pages to make a Helm book hefty enough for its $2.95 price tag. The longer stories became lugubrious with superfluous incident and detail that bowdlerized Hamilton's short-form suspense formula. A pity of Hamletic proportion.

The only other discordant note than THE WRECKING CREW in the first 18 exploits of Matt Helm is THE SHADOWERS, a book that starts out great but stumbles to its knees and whimpers to an end. There are two other misfires in those initial 18 editions: THE RAVAGERS #8 had the usual Hamilton verve but lacked his usual punch despite a clever twist in Act III; THE RETALIATORS #17 is a fourth weak point, but only because Helm should have shot the maddening female lead in that one as fast as he could draw that five-chambered .38 S&W snubnose he dislikes so much. These four books don't approach the zenith of the series: Citizen, Removers, Murderers' Row, Ambushers, Devastators, Betrayers, Menacers, Interlopers, Terminators or Terrorizers. Those ten books are the pillars of strength shoring up the Helm legend. The remaining four, Silencers, Poisoners, Intriguers and Intimidators, are excellent reads but not great like the aforementioned ten. They're two different words in my vocabulary. There's a lot of excellence in this world, but so very little greatness.