Keith Wease

If you're a fan of Hamilton's Matt Helm series, then you'll likely enjoy this. In his foreword, Wease says that he's a fan & a writer, so he spent some time making notes of this period by simply reading the series. He tells us that he copied quite a bit of the text & reused it in this novel. I easily recognized entire paragraphs & passages.

For the first half of the book, this was all to the good, but then repetition started & I'm not a fan of that. I think he reused one bit three times. I also wasn't fond of Tina's story. The beginning of it was word-for-word from the book & then he went back in time only to take us back to what he'd already told us & never really showed her or the situation beyond what Hamilton had done.

I'm on a roll, so I might as well get another major fault of this book out of the way now. Helm's pocket knife is used to torture him, much the way Vadaya did with the soldering iron. I think that scene was pretty much cribbed. Nothing wrong with that, but Helm NEVER says anything about the abuse done to his knife. Helm likes knives, especially this one, & knows about tempering - seriously major boo-boo.

So why did I give this book such high marks? Because Wease did a great job keeping Hamilton's tone & said up front that it was a pastiche. It's on the cover, but it's more than that. He's a real fan who did a credible job adding to the series & even let Gordon Hamilton edit it. It was fun meeting so many of the missions & people we only had glimpses of before. I like his take on it, even if I am being nitpicky. Overall, I loved it & will add it to my collection, probably to re-read it some time. I'll recommend it to other Hamilton fans.… (més)