Donald Hamilton
| Donald Hamilton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Donald Bengtsson Hamilton March 24, 1916 Uppsala, Sweden |
| Died | November 20, 2006 (aged 90) United States |
| Occupation | Novelist, writer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Swedish American |
| Citizenship | Sweden, United States |
| Genre | Spy fiction, non-fiction |
| Notable works | Creator of Matt Helm |
Donald Bengtsson Hamilton (March 24, 1916 – November 20, 2006) 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 best known 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."
Hamilton was born on March 24, 1916, in Uppsala, Sweden, to Count Bengt Leopold Knutsson Hamilton and Elise Franzisca Hamilton (née Neovius). He later emigrated to the United States, 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. He was married to Kathleen Hamilton (née Stick) from 1941 until her death in 1989. The couple had four children: Hugo, Elise, Gordon, and Victoria Hamilton.
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. For a number of years after leaving Santa Fe he lived on his own yacht, then moved to Sweden, where he lived until his death in 2006. 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.
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