I'm noticing some poor proofreading in this edition. A lowercase 'L' turned into a capital 'I' in one case, 'nuke' replaced 'mike' in another. I'll bet they're OCR errors. So far, not as bad as the Ace reprints of the 90's, but not up to the quality of the previous reprints.

The story was still pretty good. It's set back in the 60's but holds up well, at least for me. Few use tire chains any more & phone booths need to be sought out, but otherwise not bad. Good mystery & Helm is at his cold blooded best. ( )

In the mid-60's, an atomic bomb test is plagued with security issues & one foreign agent is a tough opponent. He's killed several of our people & the entire project is in danger, so the order gets passed to Helm to stop him. The agent's identity & ridiculously tight security create problems for Helm. It makes for an amusing (at times & in a grim way) situation that Helm fights his way through in his unique, tough fashion.

How they could take such a good book & turn it into such a horrible movie, I'm not sure, but they managed it. Unlike the stupid movie, there are no weird SF type gadgets, just a cold war era spy caper with a very realistic background.


See this page:
http://homepage.mac.com/mmtz/dh/books.html
for more of Hamilton's work, including biographies, stories & nonfiction articles. It's truly a fantastic collection. ( )

Once again Matt Helm cheats death and escapes from an impossible situation, and he does it in only 144 pages! Hamilton doesn't waste a word in this quick-moving suspenseful tale enlivened by an interesting background (El Paso and southern New Mexico), a dark sense of humor, and Helm's unwavering coldbloodedness. ( )