The Betrayers

Matt Helm, Book 10

By: Donald Hamilton

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

The Betrayers is the 10th installment in Donald Hamilton's iconic and thrilling Matt Helm series, which has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Far out in the Pacific, among the sunny islands of Hawaii, a dark, venomous plot is engineered by a rogue agent, an angel-faced man called the Monk, who has a special fondness for high explosives. His target is an American troopship with 3,000 US soldiers scheduled to blow sky high - unless Matt Helm can stop him. But first Helm has to trust the beautiful stranger who claims to be his sister-in-law and insists that his former "wife" had just willed him half a million dollars.

©2015 Donald Hamilton (P)2015 Skyboat Media, Inc.

let the show go on!! excellent,as usual!

actually a helm novel where the woman lives,and another whose body is never found! helm is getting soft! but really compared to the ambushers any helm novel would be 4&1\2 🌟! Bloom 😢 not directing, but still the show goes on! and well!

Words have changed meaning

Really enjoy the series, but the word rape have changed a lot in meaning since then, any way it can be replaced with something suitable to our time, like ravage?

NUMBER 10!

Whew. I am chewing thru these at a fast rate and losing some of the details. This one - hmm, it was good but I cant exactly recall the storyline but do remember enjoying it as much as i enjoyed the other 9. Great narration.

Excellent

Matt Helm makes Jimmy Bond look like the English fop he is. i just wish Dick Hill or Richard Ferrone did the reading.

a very interesting plot

a very interesting plot , reminds me of the old days hope to have more like it it was really funny too.

Another great Helm story.

Would you listen to The Betrayers again? Why?

Possibly. The narrator is just excellent.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Matt. His attitude toward his work makes him likeable for me.

What does Stefan Rudnicki bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His voice and the way he reads it adds several layers to the story. He always FEELS like Matt Helm without trying too hard.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

One character's death and the way Matt responded in the situation. It was written very abruptly and harshly like it woudlve happened it real life. I loved it. Painted such a vivid picture with such few words.

Any additional comments?

All the things ive come to love about Helm's adventures is present in this book. The conflicts, the dialogue, the mystery, the dry heroism... just.... excellent excellent excellent.

Helm, the human calculating machine!

Helm was going to Hawaii for a long-deserved vacation. Mac slyly mentioned that another agent called Monk was in Hawaii, probing Helm for his recollection. Helm had worked with Monk and he wanted nothing to do with him again. Mac had other ideas. There were suspicions of Monk having ties with Peking. This must be investigated very quietly and without bringing dishonor on Monk’s reputation. Arriving in the Paradise of the Pacific, Helm opens a letter from an attorney that was waiting for him. It states that his late wife Winifred Philipa Marner, aka Claire, was one of two principal legatees of a man named Philip Grant Marner. A woman named Isabel McClain was also waiting for Helm. She had a distinct connection with the letter. So much for the setup of the story. A young, rather inexperienced agent named Jill Donelly was put on Helm by Monk. She was also Helm’s contact and something more. The business with the letter and Isabel is a side issue, although a surprising one, and does develop dramatically later. The main plot is Monk and what he was up to. It just takes a while to get there but when we do, it’s quite exciting. All-in-all it’s a pretty good story with several twists and turns.

Deep in the series the characters get interesting

The sexism, mysogny and occasional racism early in the series evolve to become targets for character weakness later in the series.

The writer and characters (painfully slowly) evolve and that makes for deeper characters, better writing and plots and less cringe worthy 60’s attitudes that don’t fit in 2022.

The word woke us never used but that is what is occurring on paper in these characters and maybe the author too(no idea if the novel reflects the writer’s personal perspective or if he wrote these into a character on purpose like a Gene Roddenberry of the same era).

This is set in Hawaii and interestingly juxtaposes a scenario inspired by Pearl Harbor in a method that seems relatively modern as it has been carried out in the Persian Gulf not too far in the recent past.

Maybe I missed the book in the series where he previously went to the French Rivierra but this picks up after that. I had read the book that took place in Scotland previous. Maybe I missed one or the French Riviera book was never finished?