Remember the Matt Helm Books?

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Donald Hamilton, one of the few authors who really knew guns quite well, wrote a terrific series of spy novels featuring an agent named Matt Helm. A few movies resulted, improbably starring Dean Martin as Helm.

I found one of the paperbacks in a used book store recently and am renewing my enjoyment of the books.

Was anyone else here a Helm fan?

By the way he was usually armed wih either a M-38 Bodyguard or in the later books, the M-60. Carried a lockblade knife, too, which varied with the book.

I think that Donald Hamilton was the only gun/hunting writer other than Hemingway and Ruark who was also a successfu novelist. His material appeared in such titles as, "Field & Sream" and "Gun Digest."

T-Star
 
Hi:
I enjoyed the "Matt Helm" series books but not the movies.
If I recall correctly, Matt favorited a Colt Woodsman sport model with a 4" barrel (first books).
Jimmy
 
I have most of them sitting on my paperback shelf.

Also have a collection of magazine pieces and short stories by Hamilton called, "On Guns And Hunting." It's a good read.
 
I started reading them in HS and really enjoyed them. He was a good writer and I always liked the stories. Very early on Matt (Eric) had to leave the Woodsman at a crime scene or somehow he lost it. He was also very partial to Remington 870's and Remington rifles in 7mm magnum. The writer was also very knowledgeable about trucks and cars.

I remember in one of the stories he was impersonating a Texan and he carried a short barreled Smith 357. I would assume that it was a 27.

To this day, I still always carry a folding lockblade knife.
 
max said:
I started reading them in HS and really enjoyed them. He was a good writer and I always liked the stories. Very early on Matt (Eric) had to leave the Woodsman at a crime scene or somehow he lost it. He was also very partial to Remington 870's and Remington rifles in 7mm magnum. The writer was also very knowledgeable about trucks and cars.

I remember in one of the stories he was impersonating a Texan and he carried a short barreled Smith 357. I would assume that it was a 27.

To this day, I still always carry a folding lockblade knife.
Click to expand...


I don't recall him using an M-870, but it may have been in the second book, "The Wrecking Crew", where he imported a Remington shotgun and Winchester rifle into Sweden. I think he said the 12 gauge was a pump, and the M-870 was the standard Remington pump by then. Those were for sporting purposes.

Hamilton often hunted with a .308 M-70 Fwt., but I don't think Helm ever used one. Hamilton was also seen using a Remington M-1100 in, "Gun Digest" one year.

Helm lost or had to leave his Woodsman .22 that he carried in WW II, and thereafter used mainly S&W snub .38's.

In the book that I think one reader has in mind, he did not have a S&W .357, let alone a M-27. It was a 2.5-inch barrelled Colt Python. It was the gun used by a dead man whom he was impersonating. I think that was in, "The Interlopers."

I believe he left his fancy custom lockblade folder in a man to stage a fight scene to cover a killing, and replaced it with a used Buck No. 110. "Interlopers" was one of my favorite books in the series.

I also liked, "The Removers" a lot, and am re-reading it now.

Does anyone know what became of Hamilton? Last I read, many years ago, he had returned to Sweden and was restoring classic yachts. He must be about 90 by now?

T-Star
 
Two other Hamilton books

"Assasins Have Stary Eyes" and "The Two Shoot Gun" are older and harder to find. I have all the Matt Helm books as well as these two.
 
Spies had great lives back then....

cvr_silencers.jpg
 
I bought several of them at a library book sale years ago. I haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

I saw all of the movies when I was in grammar school. Having never read the books, I had no expectations. They were just goofy fun, plus the soundtracks were always great.

I was looking at a Matt Helm site a few years ago, and there were rumors of a new movie or movies. Of course they've been threatening to make a movie of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" since before my mother was born and I'm 51.
 
Death of a Citizen is a must read classic, one of the best novels of the 60's, period. Hamilton's voice as Helm is witty, intelligent and absorbing and the plots are realistic, yet still exciting. The first Helm novel I read was the Demolishers, where Matt takes on the men who killed his son (working along side his newly widowed newlywed daughter-in-law).

He was one of many influences that inspired me to be a professional writer.
 
I lived in Santa Fe NM from 1972 until about 1975 or 6. At that time I worked at a local gunshop and was on a trap shooting team. Don Hamilton used to come out and shoot at our trap range quite often and I got a chance to spend several hours talking to him at the range and at the gunshop. He as an extremely smart man, and very nice also.
He offered many times to autograph copies of his novels for me, but being young and somewhat ignorant, I always put off buying them.
 
Donald Hamilton, Yes! I read all those books and loved them. I still open a folding knife with that back-handed flip Helm/Hamilton described in one of his books. If you don't think that took a teenager a lot of practice...

But Dean Martin. Well...
 
My father, who had good taste in books, got me started on that series in the mid-60s. You could learn a lot of useful stuff from the protagonist. Maybe I need to reread them.
 
Early on, Donald Hamilton was a landmark in my fiction reading. After reading his stuff, where there were no technical errors, and even the opinions had a basis other than "literary license," I stopped reading novels whose authors didn't know what they were writing about, mainly because they just p***ed me off. Eventually, I got around to thinking about it, and realized that if the authors were ignorant on one thing, they were probably ignorant on others, and the whole novel was just BS. I still read novels occasionally, but before I even read the jacket blurb on the subject matter, I read the author's credentials. If all he is is an author or a newspaperman, I usually put the book down right then, unless there is something in the book that hints that he knows what he is talking about.

Anyway, I had no such problem with Donald Hamilton, and he saved me a lot of time I might have wasted on lesser authors.

I believe that I have every one of his books.
 
GRIZZLYBEAR said:
I read all of his books years ago, but I wasn't smart enough to keep those paperbacks.

grizz
Click to expand...

They're getting to be hard to find. Not as hard as Modesty Blaise books, but scarce.

Helm and Modesty were my favorite fiction series. Both authors were very intelligent and got their gun and other data right. I think Modesty was the only fictional character to ever use a S&W .41 Magnum, although her usual carry guns were a "Colt .32" and a Star PD .45. The Colt was a revolver, probably a Cobra, although the author was shown posing with a New Police. Modesty was also quite agile with a Lee-Enfield and an AR-15.

T-Star
 
Donald Hamilton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Please do hit this link and read all about Hamilton, who was a remarkable person.

Someone posted this Wiki link on Page 1, but if you missed it there, click on it now. You'll be fascinated, I think.

There is one unpublished Helm book. completed in 2002. I hope it sees print.

T-Star
 
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