Death of a Citizen (21 page)
Read Death of a Citizen Online
Authors: Donald Hamilton
I sat there and wondered how I’d answer him, when he came. The terrible thing was, I didn’t really know…
Donald Hamilton was the creator of secret agent Matt Helm, star of 27 novels that have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Born in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States and studied at the University of Chicago. During the Second World War he served in the United States Naval Reserve, and in 1941 he married Kathleen Stick, with whom he had four children.
The first Matt Helm book,
Death of a Citizen,
was published in 1960 to great acclaim, and four of the subsequent novels were made into motion pictures. Hamilton was also the author of several outstanding stand-alone thrillers and westerns, including two novels adapted for the big screen as
The Big Country
and
The Violent Men.
Donald Hamilton died in 2006.
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
The Wrecking Crew
The Removers
(April 2013)
The Silencers
(June 2013)
Murderers’ Row
(August 2013)
The Ambushers
(October 2013)
The Shadowers
(December 2013)
The Ravagers
(February 2014)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.”
Anthony Boucher,
The New York Times
“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.”
Book Week
“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times
“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good...”
Milwaukee Journal
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
A series of slick espionage thrillers from the New York Times bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message from Málaga
While We Still Live
The Double Image
Neither Five Nor Three
(March 2013)
Horizon
(April 2013)
Snare of the Hunter
(May 2013)
Agent in Place
(June 2013)
PRAISE FOR HELEN MACINNES
“The queen of spy writers.”
Sunday Express
“Definitely in the top class.”
Daily Mail
“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.”
The New York Times
“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.”
Newsweek
“More class than most adventure writers accumulate in a lifetime.”
Chicago Daily News
“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.”
Times Literary Supplement
“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.”
The New Yorker
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
BY DANIEL STASHOWER
The Dime Museum Murders
The Floating Lady Murder
The Houdini Specter
In turn-of-the-century New York, the Great Houdini’s confidence in his own abilities is matched only by the indifference of the paying public. Now the young performer has the opportunity to make a name for himself by attempting the most amazing feats of his fledgling career—solving what seem to be impenetrable crimes. With the reluctant help of his brother Dash, Houdini must unravel murders, debunk frauds and escape from danger that is no illusion...
PRAISE FOR DANIEL STASHOWER
“A romp that cleverly combines history and legend, taking a few liberties with each. Mr. Stashower has done his homework…This is charming…it might have amused Conan Doyle.”
The New York Times
“In his first mystery, Stashower paired Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes to marvelous effect.”
Chicago Tribune
“Stashower’s clever adaptation of the Conan Doyle conventions—Holmes’s uncanny powers of observation and of disguise, the scenes and customs of Victorian life—makes it fun to read. Descriptions and explanations of some of Houdini’s astonishing magic routines add an extra dimension to this pleasant adventure.”
Publishers Weekly
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s timeless creation returns in a series of handsomely designed detective stories.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
encapsulates the most varied and thrilling cases of the world’s greatest detective.
The Ectoplasmic Man
by Daniel Stashower
The War of the Worlds
by Manly Wade Wellman & Wade Wellman
The Scroll of the Dead
by David Stuart Davies
The Stalwart Companions
by H. Paul Jeffers
The Veiled Detective
by David Stuart Davies
The Man From Hell
by Barrie Roberts
Séance For A Vampire
by Fred Saberhagen
The Seventh Bullet
by Daniel D. Victor
The Whitechapel Horrors
by Edward B. Hanna
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes
by Loren D. Estleman
The Angel of the Opera
by Sam Siciliano
The Giant Rat of Sumatra
by Richard L. Boyer
The Peerless Peer
by Philip José Farmer
The Star of India
by Carole Buggé
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE LOST MIKE HAMMER NOVEL
Hammer and Velda go on vacation to a small beach town on Long Island after wrapping up the Williams case (
I, the Jury
). Walking romantically along the broadwalk, they witness a brutal beating at the hands of some vicious local cops—Hammer wades in to defend the victim.
When a woman turns up naked—and dead— astride the statue of a horse in the small-town city park, how she wound up this unlikely Lady Godiva is just one of the mysteries Hammer feels compelled to solve…
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE LOST MIKE HAMMER NOVEL
Hammer accompanies a conservative politician to Moscow on a fact-finding mission. While there, he is arrested by the KGB on a bogus charge, and imprisoned; but he quickly escapes, creating an international incident by getting into a firefight with Russian agents.
On his stateside return, the government is none too happy with Mr. Hammer. Russia is insisting upon his return to stand charges, and various government agencies are following him. A question dogs our hero: why him? Why does Russia want him back, and why (as evidence increasingly indicates) was he singled out to accompany the senator to Russia in the first place?
COMING IN 2014 FROM TITAN BOOKS
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE PENULTIMATE MIKE HAMMER NOVEL
As his old friend Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide approaches retirement, Hammer finds himself up against a clever serial killer targeting only cops.
A killer Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, apparently indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if, somehow, this seemingly placid, very odd old man might be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes.
At the same time Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout—some of it mob, some of it federal government—over the $89 billion dollar cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago…