Donald Hamilton

Donald Hamilton
BornDonald Bengtsson Hamilton
(1916-03-24)March 24, 1916
Uppsala, Sweden
DiedNovember 20, 2006(2006-11-20) (aged 90)
United States
OccupationNovelist, writer
LanguageEnglish
NationalitySwedish American
CitizenshipSweden, United States
GenreSpy fiction, non-fiction
Notable worksCreator of Matt Helm

Donald Bengtsson Hamilton (March 24, 1916 – November 20, 2006)[1] was an American writer of novels, short stories, and non-fiction about the outdoors. His novels consist mostly of paperback originals, principally spy fiction, but also crime fiction and westerns, such as The Big Country. He is known best for his long-running Matt Helm series (1960-1993), which chronicles the adventures of an undercover counter-agent/assassin working for a secret American government agency. The noted critic Anthony Boucher wrote: "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."[2]

  1. ^ "Finding Aid for the Donald Hamilton papers, 1945-1995". oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2021-12-26.
  2. ^ Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler, New York, 1976, page 195.