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.
Donald attended the University of Chicago (receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1938), and served in the United States Navy Reserve during World War II as a chemist with the rank of Lieutenant.
[3] A long-time resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hamilton was a skilled outdoorsman and hunter who wrote non-fiction articles for outdoor magazines and published a book-length collection of them.
A number of his Matt Helm novels are situated in the Santa Fe area and American Southwest in general; as Hamilton developed an interest in boating, many of the books began to have a nautical component as well.
The most interesting of them is, arguably, Assignment: Murder, (alternate title: Assassins Have Starry Eyes), in which a mathematician working on the design for a nuclear bomb has to save his kidnapped wife from a group of shadowy villains.
Series Matt Helm Other crime novels Short stories Westerns Non-fiction Editor The Violent Men, 1955; adaptation of Smoky Valley.
General audiences may be more familiar with Matt Helm through a series of popular action-comedy movies produced during the late 1960s featuring Dean Martin in the title role.