Matt Helm #27 - The Damagers

By 1993, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton had lost its steam and readers after 33 years and 27 installments. The final adventure was The Damagers, and it was a commercial flop that exists today as a reprint. Did the government assassin series end with a bang or a whimper?

The book begins with Matt Helm living undercover on a luxury 38-foot yacht on Long Island Sound. He meets up with his first partner for the assignment, a beautiful Swedish-American spy named Ziggy from a different agency, who actually knows how to pilot and operate the vessel.

The mission? Well, it’s more of a mystery. The last three people responsible for sailing the boat - named The Lorelei III - died under mysterious circumstances while on the ship. The dead yacht enthusiasts were undercover operatives for a sister U.S. intel agency, and their bosses are very interested in the reasons the last three people on this yacht were clipped. Matt’s little agency is tasked with learning that motive.

So Matt is basically a decoy. He’s told to prevent his own death, capture the would-be killers, and relinquish them for interrogation until their agenda is known. For this assignment, he’s the bait for a counter-assassin operation.

Once Matt sets sail towards Florida on his ruse journey, the author (through Matt’s first-person narration) delves into way too much detail about the fixtures, equipment and operations of a large luxury yacht. Perhaps Donald Hamilton was trying to stretch the page count to 1993 levels when Tom Clancy imitators were dominating spy fiction. In any case, the voluminous maritime specificity throughout this book is a total snooze that can be safely skimmed.

But don’t skip the budding sexual tension between Matt and his sensuous co-pilot. There’s a rather sneaky early plot-twist that I should have seen coming, but didn’t. Even late in his career, Hamilton still had some tricks up his sleeve.

Once the mission and the adversary become clear, we learn that The Damagers is a sequel, of sorts, to the second Matt Helm installment, The Wrecking Crew. A Swedish assassin whose father was killed by Matt in that 1960 novel is out for revenge. There’s danger for Matt at every turn. Every sexy woman he encounters and lays is either a secret adversary or a secret ally.

The conventional wisdom is that the Matt Helm series lost its shine with the last handful of novels, but The Damagers was a lot of fun — like catching up with a dear, old (deadly) friend. Breeze past the yachting nonsense and enjoy the final adventure of a great series character. Get the book HERE.