Don Brown, Author

I was searching the Kindle books on line for a quick down load vacation read. I picked Malaccan Conspiracy because it looked like a Tom Clancy. I wanted a quick read of a modern thriller. Just as historical fiction teaches me a bit of history, and science fiction gives me a bit of advance science, reading these geo political thrillers keeps me marginally in touch with geography and politics of the day. They're all kind of Clint Eastwood Westerns with good guys and bad guys, chases, and guns and James Bond type sleek women who don't complain or nag.

Don Brown's Malaccan Conspiracy turned out to be the latest in the Zondervan Navy Justice Series. Don Brown was a JAG Officer who served with the Pentagon and got lots of Navy medals. His writing really is Tom Clancy with a soul. Clancy is the real leader in action thrillers and catches the heart of the matter but it wasn't until I read Don Brown that I realized what he was missing. Of course the President would pray if he was facing a nuclear strike on Washington. Prayers and ethics and morals are a part of Don Brown's books. There's a delightful irony too regarding political correctness. The minister of state's conversations with the minister of defense and the concerns about television ratings in face of mass destruction are worth the read alone. I loved the fast paced Bourne Identity writing and the high action geo political story of terrorists and good guys so downloaded The Black Sea Affair. Sure enough I'm enjoying it just as well.

The characters are real and yet there's something uplifting about the series. I just learned where John, the writer of Revelations lived on a mediterranean island because a character commented about it. I realized I was growing tired of action writers telling me where the best wine was. I like that theres not the drinking and drugging that are so apart of many modern writer's ideas of what 'action men' are like. Yet here's an ex Navy officer saying the submariners are drinking black coffee and it's that much more believable. The men are talking about their wives the way men talk about their wives. Even the bad guys talk about women the way guys talk about women. I realized I've been subjected to a subtle form of low brow propaganda about drugs, alcohol, and pornography in some of the other thriller writing.

Zondervan is the publisher. I didn't know that till I looked up who Don Brown was. It figures. I like Zondervan's major publication series a lot so figure anyone who does will also like Don Brown's writing.

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