Hamilton began his writing career in 1946, submitting pieces to fiction magazines like "Collier's Weekly" and "The Saturday Evening Post". His first novel, "Date With Darkness", was published in 1947; over the next 46 years he published a total of 38 novels. His first three books were published in hardcover by Rinehart. After World War II, American publishers began to experiment with issuing original paperback fiction. Most of his early novels — published between 1954 and 1960 — were typical paperback originals of the era: fast-moving tales in paperbacks with lurid covers, whether suspense, spy, or western. The most interesting of them is, arguably, "", (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. Two classic western movies, "The Big Country" and "The Violent Men", were adapted from his western novels.