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Hollywood turned spy fiction’s most hard-boiled killer into Austin Powers
James Bond wasn’t the only suave-but-brutal spy on the 1960s pulp-novel scene. While Ian Fleming sparked the craze with his 1953 debut novel Casino Royale, which introduced the world to 007, seven years later, Donald Hamilton would introduce a deadlier spy into the international arms race in Death of a Citizen. Matt Helm is retired and living a quiet life as a journalist in New Mexico, before being drawn back into the world of espionage when a young woman from his past appears asking for his help. The books eschew the glamor of Bond, instead offering up a hard-boiled violence and scrappiness that makes them feel more like noir than the super-spies we’re used to.