The Iron Mistriss, by Paul Hellman. Not too hisgtoricly accurate, but a fun imagine of Jim Bowie that led to the 1952 movie of the same name.
Also the old Matt Helm series paper backs that had absolute no relation to the dumb movies of the same name that murdered the original stories by author Donald Hamilton. Helm was a government assassin in the Cold War days, and liked a nice shape knife. His evolution of blades over all the novels was interesting. It was obvious that author Hamilton was a knife guy.
Here is a cool blade-oriented excerpt from Children of the Neon Bamboo:
Eventually, Loo taps me on the arm and points up the hill.
McGuinn is doing a slow sword kata, a physical meditation. You’d think it was some kind of Tai Chi. It was a thing of beauty, pure focus as he slowly turned. On a dusty Arkansas summer evening, a Miami international playboy martial arts instructor is spinning an ancient samurai sword in a slow, perfectly controlled motion. Loo and I sat and watched, mesmerized. No one can ever accuse me of not having seen interesting things.
He stops, bows, and starts walking toward the car. “Let’s go, boys.” He pops the trunk. “You two can look at it.” He pulled it out of its beat-up black lacquer
saya (Japanese for scabbard). The leather wrapping around the top of the scabbard,
Sageo, was purple. “It’s bad manners to look at if it’s not completely unsheathed,” he said as he pulled it out.
He pointed toward the base of the sword at a little chip. “This nick here,” he says as he looks at me. I see it and nod. “About 400 years ago, when this sword was 300 years old, it was carried in a famous showdown between two elite samurai: General Honjo Shigenaga and Umanosuke, a swordsman with many high-profile trophy kills on his resume. Umanosuke carried this sword, and he hit the general on the head with it several times, damaging the blade and destroying the helmet. The general ended up snatching victory at the last moment, earning the famous blade. But afterward, they had to take 20cm off what was once a longsword.”
He made eye contact with us and slowly ran his finger down the blade. Loo was entranced and serious about the lesson, listening and looking closely.
“It takes a lifetime to get good at sword evaluation, it’s a deep art and science, but the reason Musamune is considered the greatest is the Jigane, the quality of the material of the blade. The steel is both stronger and more beautiful. Look, there are no impurities.”
It was darker, closer to a greyish black than the bright silver you’d expect. People have asked me if it was magical, and even used the words “aura-enshrouded soul.” And the thing is, I don’t know. At the time, with McGuinn talking, I felt like it was the most important item in the world. But, if I go back and objectively think about the sword, in a vacuum with no context, you could have told me it was a fake from a Tennessee junk shop, and I would have believed you. But I guess that speaks about my knowledge of swords rather than the sword itself. Some people don’t like
What a Fool Believes by the Doobie Brothers.
