Fri 12 Dec 2025
DONALD HAMILTON – The Infiltrators. Matt Helm #21. Gold Medal; paperback original; 1st printing, June 1984.
Matt Helm helps rehabilitate a lady attorney just released from prison and in the process discovers that not only is the lady’s story true, but that there are some very fancy worms in the government’s woodwork.
I liked the first half (the reclamation project) better than the second (the work Helm gets paid for). Too much padding, and too much coincidence (although you don’t realize the latter until some time later).
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.3, February 1988.
December 13th, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Great minds think alike! My review of THE INFILTRATORS parallels yours: http://georgekelley.org/fridays-forgotten-books-796/
December 13th, 2025 at 7:19 pm
When it comes to great minds, George, I will concede the concept and let you prevail. But I think we think the same way more often than other people think we might. I’ll suggest to everyone else they ought to follow the link, but your last line or so provides an easy recap on your end:
“If you’re in the mood for a traditional spy novel with blah, blah, blah, The Infiltrations might just qualify as a moderately entertaining Summer Book. GRADE: C”
I can’t disagree with that. The series had a good run at the beginning, but after a while Hamilton just seemed to run out of stories to tell. And/or not to have been able to tell them as well as he should have.
December 14th, 2025 at 7:07 am
Yeah, the first 10 or 12 were the best. After that, not so much.
December 17th, 2025 at 8:40 am
Have yet to read this far into Hamilton’s series, but was intrigued years ago when I learned that the wacky Dean Martin spoofs were based on deadly serious, ha ha, novels. At the risk of blowing my own horn (yeah, I know, as usual), I refer interested parties to my exhaustive page-to-screen analysis from the Cinema Retro site, with apologies for the “character salad.”
https://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/164-MR.-HELM-GOES-TO-HOLLYWOOD.html
December 17th, 2025 at 1:43 pm
Thanks for the link, Matthew. I know what you mean by the “word salad.” Earlier posts on this blog have the same affliction. I’ve cleaned it up on a purely random basis, but it is in fact overwhelming. Maybe someday.
But, in terms of the films, I remember enjoying them at the time (with conscious reservations), but I tried watching one earlier this year and not be able to get more than 5 or 10 minutes into it.
The work “putrid” comes to mind.
December 17th, 2025 at 4:42 pm
Doubtless it didn’t hurt the films that in my case I came to them, first, with no preconceptions about the books and, second, at an impressionable age when I could revel in the parade of pulchritude…
December 17th, 2025 at 6:38 pm
Yes, of course. There is that. Exactly right.
December 20th, 2025 at 12:45 am
By this point Hamilton was generally well below C Minus for me with his seeming inability to hold things together for a satisfying ending and the padding and less than suspenseful journeys starting to drag rather badly.
As he went along rather than improve on his early work or expand on it Hamilton seemed to just double down on his most annoying habits. Helm was never, despite some naive critics, a particularly believable secret agent and the patriotic curmudgeon bit grew a bit tired compared to the usual disillusioned romantic secret agent figure, certainly hard to maintain as an attractive lean.
That said, the first eight to twelve books are excellent to very good and after that it is seldom hit and once in a while a miss completely with South American revolutions and overthrows all running into each other.
It frankly felt like once the money was coming it fairly regularly Hamilton would rather be doing something else than writing them. I don’t know whether that is true or not, but they read that way, at least they did to me.