The Silencers

A Matt Helm Novel, Book 4

By: Donald Hamilton

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

The fourth installment in the legendary Matt Helm thrillers.

Matt Helm, code name Eric, is sent to extract a female agent working as a stripper in a bar in Mexico. When she is killed before Helm can complete his mission, he finds himself teamed up with the woman's sister as he fights to save the lives of a group of scientists and American officials.

Originally released in the era of the James Bond novels, the Matt Helm novels were considered grittier and more realistic than Bond, garnering them critical praise and an ardent audience.

©1962, 2013 Donald Hamilton (P)2014 Skyboat Media

GOOD FUN

Pretty brutal for the era but worth the listen. Good characters, interesting plot, great narration - onto the next one!

great adventure

great adventure I'm getting more and more intrigued with the character in the book The narrator is awesome

To catch a little bird!

Matt Helm, “Eric” no cover story, and “reactivated” counter-agent, aka assassin. Helm receives a telephone call from his handler Mac and is instructed to recover an operator named Sarah from Warez, NM, across the river from El Paso, TX where he was currently staying. In his hotel room Helm opened a letter that was waiting for him at the front desk. It contained a report from Private Investigations Inc. on a Lilah Martinez aka Mary Jane Helm, Mrs. L. Helm, born Mary Jane Springer who Helm had asked to locate. She was currently working at The Club Chihuahua in Warez. Pat Lebaron, another operator, from Private Investigations Inc. met Helm at his hotel and they proceeded to make their way into Warez. Lilah was parading on the stage at The Club Chihuahua, a moment later she was prone on the stage with a knife in her back. She passed something to another woman Gail Hendricks aka Springer, her sister, who Helm took hold of and they were out the back door into a taxi. Getting Lilah out of the country seemed like a wasted effort at this point. So much for the setup of the story. From here the focus switches to Gail and the man dressed in cowboy gear she entered the club with. The man was suspected of being an enemy agent known as Cowboy, which brought additional suspicion on Gail. Now it was up to Helm, with Gail in tow, to find Cowboy and put him out of commission. At the same time, find out what that passed information had to do with the enemy and put an end to those plans. As usual, Helm offers himself as bait to secure the target(s).

Great just not my favorite in the Matt Helm series

What did you love best about The Silencers?

The verbal conflicts/dances. I love the mental chess games of some of the conversations in the book.

What other book might you compare The Silencers to and why?

All the other Matt Helm books for obvious reasons.

What about Stefan Rudnicki’s performance did you like?

He always comes off as someone talking about his past not a narrator telling a cool story. It makes it more intriguing. It is like listening to a war vet talk about his time in the service instead of a teacher reading a book to you. Amazing.

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

Matt interrogating another character. The writer did a great job of making Matt VERY intelligent but not omniscient. You never feel 100% on the outcome of his encounters so it feeds the tension and realism of the world . He feels very efficient but not Godly. Like a chess player.

Any additional comments?

Story wise this was not one of my favorites. It is written very well. It all felt critical and believable. But the game itself did not grip me as much as it did in the other books ( im listening to them all in order). The grander scale of this one highlighted Matt's "that aint my job" attitude and fleshed him out more.

So far the conflicts have been a bit more intimate and focused. I suppose the change made it less enjoyable for me personally. It felt less like a rubicks cube and more like a big jigsaw puzzle.

Still good. Just a low point for the quality ive seen so far.

Hey.....

The stories are starting to run like a real spy novel. It almost in a vague way resembles the movie. Or is it the other way around? Still, not a bad story. Even pace. There weren’t any of those spots where the story seems to drag on for no discernible reason. Or where they want to delve into the deep underlying current of why the hero is the way he is.

Words have changed menaing

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?

First good book I’m the series

This is the fourth book and the series and I feel the first good one. The others were not bad but it has taken three books of character development and more before this series is starting to mature.

This is not uncommon but it’s gratifying to witness it improve.

There’s still a 60’s vibe of misogyny and avoidance of descriptive sex scenes that might (or might not) have worked back then and just feels weird now.

Sort of feels like doing archaeology sometimes reading these older series and great when you come across a good one and sometimes it’s just a lot of observing well that’s how they wrote them then, even if a good bit of it might be unrealistic 60’s fantasy or something.

Bonus hearing about some of the tech of the era glossed over with science fiction and today it is well known and used all over.

Enjoyable, but not the best

This is my 4th Matt Helm book, and in my opinion, this is the weakest of the first 4. I still enjoyed it, though, and I'm already an hour into book 5 (and enjoying it).

Women were treated differently when this was written back in the 60s, than they are now, and that is apparent in all the Matt Helm books, but particularly so in this book. It's grating, but less so knowing that we've come a long way since the 60s. So when Matt makes a comment like how he doesn't like women in pants, I just remind myself that the book was written 60 years ago, and we've made a lot of progress.

So I suppose what I'm saying is, these are fun books if you keep them in perspective, remember when they were written, and don't forget it's fiction!

The silencers

.I listened to the audio book version. found it to be enjoyable. I rather did not like the female character... and the way Matt acted around her.

The formula

Having read the previous three books in the series I'm beginning to get the Matt Helm formula. He drinks like a fish and almost never sleeps, yet his mental clarity and physical reflexes are perfect. He's cold and abusive to beautiful women, who can't wait to have sex with him. It's like a macho comic book.

The plots are not bad, not great. Enough to keep you reading but not memorable when the book is over.

Having cracked the formula, I think this will be my last Matt Helm novel for a while.

The reader is terrific. He may be the main reason I've made it this far into the series.