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.