The Terminators

By: Donald Hamilton

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

“I can’t kill you. If I do, Mac will send out the executioners, the termination squads....”

When the big man in Washington assigned Matt Helm to ride shotgun on a top-secret mission in Norway, Helm wanted to know why. But this was a need-to-know deal, at least until his partner - a woman posing as his mistress - was killed. Now Helm is mad - mad enough to blow the operation sky high.

©2015 Donald Hamilton (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc., and Skyboat Media, Inc.

The only way to be alive is to risk being dead!

No fishing trip this time. Helm is headed to Bergen, Norway. He was to help out another organization that needed an agent capable of violence and cunning. No sooner had he boarded a boat to continue the mission than his contact Evelyn was clobbered and thrown overboard. Helm managed to get information from her after fishing her out of the cold harbor. Following up on her information, Helm found the next contact, proceeding to arrange a substitute for the now-dead Evelyn. Diana Lawrence accepted the job. A newly discovered oil deposit in the North Sea is the impetus for the mission, the division of said oil the crux. So much for the setup of the story. For a bit of Helm trivia; Mac’s real name was revealed if you didn’t know it already; Arthur Borden. Two or three oil companies, a couple of countries, and a past enemy agent are all vying for a larger piece of several oil deposits. A bit of industrial espionage, not to mention a cold body or two, nothing would stand in their way. Helm’s mission was to prove them wrong. There’s an interesting twist towards the end that brings everything and all the players together. I’m not sure how Helm figured this one out, all of a sudden there it was. Well, it is a pretty good story, decent characters, and ultimately, justice was served.

NORWAY!

I guess after maybe 10 books set south of the border Don decided to travel around the planet getting local color and detail for the next novels. He liked Scotland but I dont think he cared much for Norway, still the plot is pretty good and amusing with more than usually creditable twists and turns. The girl body count is pretty high, one even going almost as soon as she has three lines of dialogue. I like Don's digs at what was political correctness back in the 60s but I bet he would be sun fishing with the mess the left has made of our human rights in these weird days. Narration perfect.

Great Story -- Weak Performance

I've listened to all books in this series at least once and believe Stefan Rudnicki is a great voice for Mr. Matthew Helm; however, this particular performance was not his best. I can only imagine there was a significant gap between performances as his voices slip in a number of places, particularly Mack. It detracts slightly from the excellent story since his usual reliable characterizations help distinguish characters better than in this effort.

Don't let that dissuade you since this is a really, really good story. As good of a mystery as these thrillers/adventure yarns provide. It's a story in which Matt has to figure out what his actual assignment is as he's given few details, and what he deduces causes him to distrust what he's been told. The setting returns to Norway (there was a previous book set in a similar area) and some good historical elements relating to World War II.

Overall a great story marred by an inconsistent performance. I hope the next installment will return Mr. Rudnicki back to form.

great book

this series is turning out really good. hope to hear more and have a great read.

Silly story details

Couldn’t finish. Perhaps the author is new, several parts of the storyline didn’t make much sense.

Terminators

This was very disappointing. Probably one of the worst audio books I listened to - the performance was also poor.