doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Fiction and the Gunsmith,

I read a lot of fiction, sometimes I think too much. I’m always on the lookout for books about guns and gunsmiths when written by knowledgeable people. A few of my favorites are,

Gerald Hammond, writes about Keith Calder a Scottish gunsmith who not only collects but shoots. The books are a wonderful look into the sporting field there. There are about twenty or so of them and I highly recommend any but start with “The Reward Game” 1980. Mr. Hammond posted a few times on the old doublegun board but I don’t think that anyone recognized him.

Donald Hamilton, yes the author of Matt Helm which I confess to reading all of them. He wrote one book about a Gunsmith ‘Line of Fire” Gold Metal Books 1955. Donald Hamilton wrote a few articles in gun magazines and knew his way around firearms.

Jonathan Gash, writes about a English antique dealer and collector named Lovejoy he must have written over twenty books but the one I like the best is “The Judas Pair” story is about a set of Wodgon pistols.

Lovejoy was a BBC televison series from 1986-1994 starring Ian MacShane as Lovejoy. The 5th episode of season 1 was The Judas Pair and aired 07-Feb-1986.

I've long enjoyed reading Donald Hamilton and Jonathan Gash, and look forward to reading Gerald Hammond.

A few others that may prove to be of interest:

Single-Handed, published in the US as Brown On Resolution, by C.S.Forester of Horation Hornblower fame. Forester also wrote Rifleman Dodd and The Gun, about the Napoleonic period.

Almost anything by Wilbur Smith, all are about Africa. Not much specifically about guns but it's obvious he knows his stuff.

Again, almost anything by Stephen Hunter whose main character is a skilled sniper named Bob Lee Swagger, these are fairly fanciful but just barely believable

A few stories by Guy Lautard who wrote The Machinist's Bedside Reader series, most are included in his machining tips books and one of them describes how to fabricate and operate a color-case-hardening setup. BTW I highly recommend these machining tips books for anyone interested in gunsmithing.

Of course all of the J.M.Pyne stories reprinted (I believe) by the editor of The Single Shot Exchange magazine, about a thinly-disguised Harry Pope.

Patrick O'Brian's series about the Aubrey-Maturin voyages of the Napoleonic period. Again not a lot about small arms (as opposed to cannons, there's plenty about cannons!) but again it's obvious he knows his stuff. There are almost 2 dozen of these and I found each one to be totally engrossing.

Reading is good clean fun and will keep you and your kids off the streets and out of trouble.
Regards, Joe

I too read a lot of fiction. A pet peeve are gun related gaffes commited by just about every current best selling crime/mystery author. ex: "spare magazines for the revolver", or Jack Higgins ballyhooing the Colt .25ACP (fitted with silencer) being a wonderful tactical weapon.

For me, the best hisorical fiction ever written are the J.M.Pyne stories by Lucian Cary. Hard to believe they were features of a mainstream national magazine (Saturday Evening Post if I'm not mistaken) 2 generations ago.

Best historical fiction I've read to date. Received the first one as a gift and took me a year to finish them all. I was eagerly waiting for the next one when O'Brian passed away a few years ago. A movie was made from combining two of the books, The Far Side of the World starring Russel Crowe, also well done for that genre and apparently quite authentic.

I also enjoyed the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cromwell. While a bit formulaic and not as detailed as O'Brian's books they do contain more about rifles and muskets. For anyone interested they should be read in chronological order of Sharpe's life, not in the order they were written, 21 books in all.

An interesting retro-macho novel if you can find it is "Dance of the Dwarfs" by Geoffrey Household, probably written in the mid-60s. I'm a sucker for any biological mystery that involves organisms larger than microbes, and this one has zoology,
woo-woo supernaturalism, and early man all mixed up in a plausible tale set in the boonies of South America. A Spanish 16 double and a Lee Enfield sporter figure prominently.

Most fictionists would do well to be very vague about the specifics of firearms or send their MS to one of you guys to edit it....

Michael,
Interesting Info about Donald Hamilton, I've known him for many years and we shot side by side at Camp Perry in the late 1960's and up into the mid 1980's. Even though we shot together and knew each other all those years I never knew he wrote much of anything other than a few articles for NRA.

He never talked about any books he wrote or things like that. We had some great times together and I think some of his shooting records still have not been broken.

Just before he passed away I acquired four of his handguns that he used at Camp Perry, like some of us he had some financial ends that he wanted to take care of so I "loan" him what he needed, sad to say after he passed away I got into some financial problems myself and I no longer have them. Goes to show ya, no matter how long you know someone I guess you never really "know" them.
S T

Geoffrey Household has also long been one of my favorites and that one is one of his best along with Rogue Male. I consider him to have been one of the finest older UK novelists along with John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps), James S. Rand (Run For the Trees), Neville Shute (On the Beach, In the Wet) and John Masters (Bhowani Junction) among others. These authors are not necessarily gun cognoscenti as such but rather are superlative storytellers, and some of their writings deal with shooting. Rand especially is worth reading for his depictions of Africa's Lado Enclave area, its hunting and its relative lawlessness.
Regards, Joe

Great stuff here, thanks all.

ST, Your the first person I ever met who knew Donald Hamilton, wish I knew more about his early life.

Joe, My favorite Steven Hunter is "Pale Horse Coming" the one with Elmer Keith, Jack O'Connor and the gang.

The last Wilbur Smith is great, one of the main characters is Kermit Roosevelt. I don't know the name because it's lost somewhere in the house but if you have not read it I can send it your way if you will return same. But first I have to find it ;-).

For the record my favorite book, and I don't believe there are any or many firearms in it, is "The Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart 1949.

Good subject, keep them coming and I can stock up for the winter.

"Line Of Fire" by Hamilton,