''Murderers' Row'' is the title of a 1962 spy novel by Donald Hamilton. It was the fifth novel featuring his creation Matt Helm, a

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

assassin recruited as a counter-agent by a secret American agency. This was the last Matt Helm novel to not use Hamilton's naming convention of ''The (Verb)-ers'' (as in '' The Annihilators'', '' The Ambushers'', etc.). The expression "

murderers' row Murderers' Row were the baseball teams of the New York Yankees in the late 1920s, widely considered some of the best teams in history. The nickname is in particular describing the first six hitters in the 1927 team lineup: Earle Combs, Mark Ko ...

" had been used previously to describe the batting line-up of the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one o ...

baseball team in the late 1920s.The Big Apple: Murderers' Row
Barry Popik. Accessed October 29, 2007.

Plot summary

Matt Helm, codenamed "Eric", is given a tough and distasteful assignment: to physically assault a fellow female agent in order to help establish her cover in an undercover operation. In doing so, however, Helm accidentally kills the woman, which results in him having to complete the woman's assignment; the assassination of an enemy agent. He is meanwhile being pursued by his own agency, which is considering removing him from active service for his brutality. The location is near Chesapeake Bay.

Film adaptation

''Murderers' Row'' was adapted for the cinema in 1966 as a film of the same name. It was one of four films starring

Dean Martin Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, actor and comedian. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the mid-20th century, Martin was nicknamed "The King of Cool". M ...

as Helm, and like the other three films the filmmakers chose to make the movie into an action comedy only very loosely based upon the novel (no incident such as Helm's accidental beating death of a female agent occurs in the movie).

References

External links

Book summary webpage
1962 American novels Matt Helm novels American novels adapted into films {{1960s-spy-novel-stub