Tue 24 Feb 2015
A GOLD MEDAL Review: DONALD HAMILTON – The Interlopers.
Posted by Steve under Characters , Reviews[25] Comments
DONALD HAMILTON – The Interlopers. Gold Medal T2073, paperback original; 1st printing, 1969. Reprinted several times.
It’s been a while since I’ve read one of Matt Helm’s adventures. When they first came out, I used to gobble them down like cotton candy, but for some reason, I don’t remember this one. It came out the year my wife and I moved from Michigan to Connecticut, and I starting teaching here, so quite possibly I had other things on my mind.
This one is number twelve in a series of 27 books that started with Death of a Citizen in 1960. In my opinion now, I don’t believe that it’s one of the better ones, but a less-than-average Donald Hamilton book is still far above the average other spy or espionage thriller of the day.
I’m not exactly sure why this particular adventure never quite took off for me. Helm is his usual competent hard-boiled self, telling his own story, killing the bad guys with no sense of remorse, either part of the job or kill or be killed. He is also quite willing to bed any lady who offers, even if he is not sure which side she is on.
And there are several sides to be on in this novel. As an assignment on behalf of another government agency to pose as a courier for Russians to foil a plot against the defense systems of the west coast of the US, Helm is confused by a group of amateur but still deadly interlopers who do not seem to be on either his side or the Russians. And the aforementioned lady is on either his side (his boss says no), or the Russians from whom she has defected (or so she says), or or she’s playing a different hand altogether (my thoughts on the matter).
Part of the problem is that the setting is not all that interesting: traveling through Canada from Washington state to Alaska, not the most exotic of locales. Or it may be that the plot the Russians have come up with is so lame: along the way Helm is to meet five different contacts (complete with secret identifying phrases), with the info he so gathers to be inserted in the studs on the Labrador puppy Helm is required to take along with him.
The title is appropriate. There are many interlopers in this story, and Helm is rightfully disdainful as to their abilities as largely out-and-out amateurs. Not an amateur, though, is the Russian assassin that Helm’s own boss has asked him to eliminate. It all makes for a very large pot of characters, but it takes a long time for things to come to a boil.
PostScript: Since Matt Helm tells his own story, it was difficult for me to get a decent picture of him in my mind’s-eye, and while the cover provides what the publisher thought was a good likeness (as shown), I have to say I disagree. But given that illustration, I’ve been trying to think of a movie actor who resembles this fellow. I’ve come up with a couple of possibilities, but none good enough to mention at the moment. What do you think? Any suggestions?
That dude in the later cover is a total imposter, as far as I’m concerned.
Also, if you haven’t seen it already, go back and read Michael Shonk’s recent review of the Matt Helm television series, the one with Tony Franciosa in the title role.
February 24th, 2015 at 4:39 pm
At some point someone at Gold Medal decided series characters were the way to go. Probably a marketing study or something. But I preferred Donald Hamilton, John D. MacDonald and Dan J. Marlowe’s stand-alone books myself.
February 24th, 2015 at 5:15 pm
Dan
Yes, I’m sure that Gold Medal kept a good eye on what books sold more than others, and series characters are a good way to keep the readers asking for more, no matter how sometimes they had to retrofit them that way. The characters, I mean, not the readers.
February 24th, 2015 at 4:56 pm
“Part of the problem is that the setting is not all that interesting: traveling through Canada from Washington state to Alaska, not the most exotic of locales.”
I beg to disagree!
David A., Vancouver, BC, Canada
February 24th, 2015 at 5:02 pm
Helm talks a good bit about his Nordic heritage. I’ve always thought of him as blonder than that picture.
February 24th, 2015 at 5:13 pm
Bill
Helm’s code name with his own agency is Eric, which goes along with what you remember as his Nordic heritage. It didn’t come up in this book, but all in all, I’d go along with his being blond. In this book he had to bleach his hair lighter, though, to match the description of the courier (now dead) who he was posing as. I also remember that he was supposed to be six foot four.
February 24th, 2015 at 5:05 pm
David A.
Well this story took place some 45 years ago. If you say things have become more exotic where you are than they were back then, I’ll have to take your word for it.
Of course most of the action takes place well north of where you are. Hamilton makes it sounds rather primitive, accomodation-wise, and severely underpopulated, probably for good reason.
February 24th, 2015 at 6:16 pm
I mentioned once that the early cover depictions of Aarons Cajun dark hero Sam Durrell often showed him with lighter hair, certainly not the dark Mississippi river-boat gambler in the book. Some covers do show him with darker hair later, but he still doesn’t look anything like the character Aarons describes.
But not everyone Nordic is blonde and I certainly never saw Helm as Doplh Lundgren. I toyed with Sterling Hayden or Richard Egan, but I can’t help it, the actor I think of as Helm is Randolph Scott.
I remember the cover so I must have had this one, but for the love of me I can’t recall reading it.
I hated those later Helm covers and the face that replaced the original. It was just a generic good looking hero face, no character, no sense of being Helm.
I always thought Hamilton made a mistake not letting us get a better idea of what Helm looked like. MacDonald was clear what McGee looked like, the image of Chester Drum on Marlowe’s books easily fit my idea of the character, Shell Scott was dead on, and Earl Drake was deliberately faceless so the fellow pictured didn’t matter as much.
I’m not sure Hamilton ever said what color Helm’s eyes were.
February 24th, 2015 at 7:04 pm
As long as you’ve brought up Sterling Hayden, David, I might as well say that he is one of the two actors I had in mind as Helm. The other is Robert Ryan. Neither is quite right, but both seem close to me.
But Randolph Scott? Maybe, but I’ll have to think a lot more about him before I say yes.
February 24th, 2015 at 7:22 pm
Ryan would be good both because he has the size and the look, but I’m not sure about him playing a nice killer, one or the other, but maybe not both at the same time.
Hayden starred in FIVE STEPS TO DANGER based on Hamilton’s story and book. That’s when I started thinking of him as Helm.
Try comparing Scott’s face to that iconic GM portrait of Helm, and keep in mind Helm is very much a westerner. Besides, who played nice men who killed people better than he did?
Actually even though he is Italian and not as big, Dean Martin would not have been bad if it had been played straight like his Alabama in SOME CAME RUNNING.
Truth is, the actor would have to bring everything to Helm, because after the first book we seldom get much of Helm as a person other than the endless rants about women in pants. American cars, and such. Even though Helm narrates you never really feel you get a glimpse inside.
February 24th, 2015 at 7:34 pm
Where does Hamilton’s Helm fit in among the male adventurer/spy/killer sub-genre?
Fleming? (oh, Desmond Cory’s books including the Johnny Fedora just were released on Kindle)
Pendleton? (what does The Executioner and all that spawned owe to Hamilton?)
Or some other group?
February 24th, 2015 at 8:43 pm
Michael
I’ve sometimes thought of Matt Helm as being the American James Bond, not nearly as suave, but dedicated to his job in the same way and just as good at it.
Donald Pendleton’s Mack Bolan is the quintessential semi-psychotic revenge-obsessed shoot-the-hell-out-of-them action hero, and as such practically created a genre and a long follow-up line of copycat men’s adventure characters. I don’t see Matt Helm having much tolerance for any of them.
Note: I see Fred Blosser’s comment came in as I was typing this one.
February 24th, 2015 at 8:35 pm
David
I don’t see Matt Helm as especially “nice.” But strangely enough, outwardly I don’t see him as “not nice” either. To me he’s the kind of guy you might be OK to go hunting or fishing with, but even if you did, you wouldn’t have any idea what would be going on inside his mind. He’s the kind of guy who stands aloof at a party but to whom women are attracted anyway. He’s polite, calls his boss “sir,” but is happy to blend into the background. To me, all this adds up to someone who’s perfect for his line of work.
February 24th, 2015 at 8:38 pm
Michael: Definitely not Pendleton and not quite Fleming One of the early cover blurbs, from a review by Milton Bass, I think, said something to the effect that Helm “revealed Jimmy Bond for the London fop he is.” I always thought that Helm’s clearest forerunner was Hammett’s Continental Op, the same understated, cynical, first-person delivery, although Helm has a considerably higher body count.
The early Helm books were superior. I’d rank DEATH OF A CITIZEN and MURDERERS’ ROW as two of the best Gold Medals ever, by anyone. The ones starting in the mid-’60s and on to the end of the series were longer and flabbier. In fact, I believe THE INTERLOPERS was the last in the series that I read all the way through.
Helm’s Scandinavian background comes up in THE WRECKING CREW, #2 in the series, when an assignment sends Helm to Sweden and he mentions that his ancestors were Swedish. I never thought of him necessarily as blond or brunet; the picture on the older covers pretty much represented what I though he looked like, if I thought about it at all, maybe because I was so familiar with it.
In the ’70s, the redrawn series characters on the Gold Medal covers tended to look like porn actors or Mafia street soldiers — longer hair, sideburns, and Disco outfits.
February 24th, 2015 at 9:10 pm
Strictly series characters I would put Helm a few steps below Bond in name recognition and certainly popularity in his day, but I would also put him at the top of the American spy series list in terms of both.
There are some more serious writers with series characters, but strictly popular fiction in the Bond mode Helm is next in line and top of the Yank list. The closest to Helm came much later in Bill Granger’s Peter Devereaux or Bill Buckley’s Blackford Oakes, but I don’t think either of them had or have the name recognition of Helm at his most popular.
Sad to say in that group of popular fiction Bond and Fleming pretty much stand alone now. It’s not that Hamilton isn’t known or even not read, but other than those movies Hamilton’s Helm is pretty much forgotten by the general public.
But Hamilton and Helm came about as close as any American series to Bond on these shores, and better movies might have made a difference. Those two Jean Dujardin films about OSS 117 actually mean Jean Bruce and OSS 117 have higher recognition than Helm for now.
Desmond Cory (Shaun McCarthy) ironically beat Bond to the punch. Johnny Fedora and OSS 117 both debuted in 1948, well before Bond in 1953.
Helm debuted early enough not to be part of the Bond band wagon (so did Sam Durrell and Joe Gall) but like them ended up in Bond’s shadow. While the movies were obviously the biggest reason for Bond’s success I think the fact Helm’s adventures remained paperback originals hurt them too. Fleming’s books were never reviewed in a paragraph by Boucher and others while covering four or five others. Had Helm appeared in hardback he might have gotten more respect, and reviews that drew the kind of attention Fleming got.
Much as we love them paperback original was a ghetto and only a few writers like MacDonald escaped them. In that sense Hamilton and Helm never really had a chance to compete.
February 24th, 2015 at 11:01 pm
Steve
Donald Hamilton said his inspiration for Helm was a “nice guy who kills people.” I never saw it myself, but that’s Hamilton’s own description of the character.
Fred,
Bond and Fleming were nothing like what came before them although Fleming borrowed from Ambler, Sapper, Chandler,Peter Cheyney and others. Hamilton and Helm are very much like what came before in American spy novels of the time. Good as the early books are they were not unlike what other American writers were doing only Helm was a series character and Hamilton a bit better voice.
I do agree Helm came out of the American hardboiled school, especially as it evolved after the war. But Bond caused a ruckus with critics for and against from the beginning, and Hamilton and Helm were just seen as being along the lines of what had come before.
Michael,
I’m not sure that Hamilton and Helm wouldn’t be insulted to even be considered in a class with the Men’s Action series Pendleton and Bolan spawned. Whether later books were as good as earlier ones (I agree they weren’t) Hamilton never churned them out as a cottage industry. I never felt Hamilton’s work was casual or just to fulfill a contract.
I agree that if he came out of any pulp traditions it was Black Mask, not the Spider or Doc Savage like Bolan and company.
February 25th, 2015 at 2:28 am
Steve,
To see how exciting Vancouver has become (or hasn’t!), you might like to check out Sam Wiebe’s recently published private eye thriller ‘Last of the Independents’. Being a first novel it’s a bit rough but still worth the effort.
February 25th, 2015 at 10:19 am
David A.
Thanks for the recommendation. I have the book already. Amazon tells me that I bought it last December. I still buy most every PI novel that comes out, once I hear about them, so someone else must have told me about it. I haven’t read it yet, alas.
As for Vancouver, let me reassure you, if that’s the right word, that Matt Helm’s travels in THE INTERLOPERS skirts the city altogether. My nephew and his girl friend live there, and I’ve seen photos. He went to school there from London (Ontario) and never wanted to leave.
February 25th, 2015 at 11:14 am
I think both Pendleton and Hamilton are excellent authors. I’ve never understood the interpretation of Bolan as “the quintessential semi-psychotic revenge-obsessed shoot-the-hell-out-of-them action hero.” That was the guy in that Barry Malzberg “Lone Wolf” series. Mack Bolan is a far more substantial creation, which accounts for his durability as an action/hero franchise.
February 25th, 2015 at 1:41 pm
Stephen
I spent quite a few minutes with my description of the Mark Bolan books and those that came along later. I was trying to be as objective as I could in describing them to Michael, and making sure he knew what to expect from the books if he tried one. I think what I said is an honest statement and a correct one. I hope you don’t think it’s a mean-spirited one, as I didn’t intend it that way. Reading it over again myself, I’m still OK with it. The Lone Wolf series I would describe as totally psychotic, and I as understand it, deliberately so.
I am fascinated by the popularity of various sub-genres of what is lumped together as “crime fiction,” with Gothics at one end of a spectrum — extremely popular for well over a decade — and the men’s adventure books on another. As you say, the men’s adventure books lasted a long long time, and over the years gave a lot of readers a lot of pleasure. The gothics have morphed in a way into the kick-ass vampire and other paranormal books that today fill the SF-fantasy racks at Barnes and Noble, while the mean’s advenure books have led to way to the popularity of books by James Rollins, Steve Berry, Matthew Reilly and other guns and high tech-oriented authors. (I hope I haven’t mischaracterized any of those writers.)
February 25th, 2015 at 2:39 pm
Thank to Fred, Steve and David (#12,13,14) for helping me to understand Helm and Hamilton’s place in the adult adventure genre.
I started to read Helm’s DEATH OF A CITIZEN and found it lacked the wit or humor I demand from the books I read. I am at the point I have tried all the sub-genres and find there is not enough time left for me to read the books in the sub-genre I like (light mystery such as Ross Thomas, Gregory Mcdonald, Norbert Davis, Craig Rice, Thomas Perry, etc).
But I am still interested and open to something different.I still like the spy novels such as Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer. I will be trying “Desmond Cory,” but Helm sounds too serious for me.
February 25th, 2015 at 3:56 pm
Michael,
No, not a lot of humor in Hamilton or Helm, even Jim Thompson did a comedic novel, but not Hamilton. He’s certainly not in a category with the writers you mention as writing light mystery. Ross Thomas McCorkle and Padillo books and Durant and Wu books are good ones to compare to Hamilton and Helm and not favorably for the latter. And for my money much better.
That said, at his best, especially in the non Helm novels and westerns, Hamilton was very good, and some of the early Helms are very good at least up through THE REVENGERS the books are mostly well done.
But, and it is a big one, Kardasian size, too often the Helm books read as if you were following the adventures of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in GRUMPY OLD MEN, THE SPY YEARS.
Most of the later plots were pretty much the same thing over and over, too padded, and Helm certainly not what Hamilton claimed to have intended. I can’t recall a book where he liked anyone on any team he worked with which would be fatal in a real operation. A few times he changes his mind after they get killed saving him or the mission, but not often.
The ex OSS, CIA, and other intelligence types I knew all read Bond even if they laughed at some of it. They did not bother with Hamilton, Aarons, or Atlee — and he had actual experience.
I think you will enjoy the Johnny Fedora books (he quit writing them because they became too popular for his taste). There is a wry dry humor there, and he can be striking. I still remember all too vividly a chapter in SHOCKWAVE where Fedora has to dispose of a body in a hotel room.
And McCarty is the real thing. Toward the end of the war Churchill recruited a group of men to hunt down and kill war criminals who were escaping Europe and too small fry to be the focus of major hunts. McCarthy was one of the men in that group and it not only inspired Fedora, but Ian Fleming’s license to kill.
Invariably real agents who turned to fiction wrote the more flamboyant kind like Fleming, Cory, Buckley, MacInnes, and going back to Buchan. Maugham was an exception, but the majority went the flamboyant way.
February 27th, 2015 at 10:33 am
A couple of years ago I read and reviewed THE VANISHERS, one of the later Helm books. (http://kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com/2013/06/ffb-review-vanishers-by-donald-hamilton.html) Unlike the earlier titles in the series, it was much too long and padded out with descriptions of places Helm traveled through and to.
February 27th, 2015 at 11:48 am
Thanks, Barry. I enjoyed reading your review. Oh, as for the publishers wanting more pages so to charge more, it was actually the readers fault. Many feel like they pay by the page and feel cheated by how short the under 300 pages feel.
A few years ago I was interested in getting published and the rule (according to the agents and experts at the time) was print publishers wanted a book to be around 80,000 words and 300 pages, and readers would not take anything less seriously. Today the Kindle and e-books have brought back the short story and shorter books since size and weight are not a factor holding a Kindle.
February 27th, 2015 at 1:54 pm
I agree with David on the terrible covers on the later books in the Matt Helm series. They look pretty generic (you could put them on the covers of a Jack Higgins novel and they would work just as well). And Steve Mertz has it right about creating durable characters.
April 2nd, 2015 at 1:01 pm
I think Fred nails it. Helm is to spy fiction what the Op is to private eye fiction.
I don’t think of Helm as an “American James Bond.” In fact, his Gold Medal stable-mate, Sam Durell, fits that description much better. Bond works for an elite branch of MI-6, the “00” section. Durell works for an elite branch of the CIA, K Section. Both have gruff, avuncular bosses who were military officers in past lives, Admiral “M” and General McFee. Both are expert gamblers. Both take on deformed, nasty villains with grandiose plots in most of the entries. Plus, the first Durell hit American bookstands in 1955, less than a year after the first US edition of CASINO ROYALE. A lot of this is probably just coincidence, but as Bond became more popular, I think Aarons was influenced.
However, in the sense of being he most deliberately imitative, the paperback superspy version of Nick Carter has to be regarded as truly being the “American James Bond.”
Of those who came after Helm the most similar, though retaining a lot of individual qualities that Helm does not have, is Adam Hall’s Quiller. Both ultra-professional, and concerned about professionalism. Both first-person narrators. Both working for independent outfits separate and distinct from the better-known intelligence agencies, who take on the jobs no other agency wants, outfits that don’t seem to officially exist in the books, and don’t exist at all in real life. Quiller, however, clearly isn’t as well-adjusted as Helm.