Nicholas Cain
American writer
Nicholas Cain is a private investigator and author of action novels.
Military career
Cain was born and raised in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. In 1972, despite a relatively high draft number of 363, he volunteered for the Vietnam War, where he served as a US Army military policeman until 1973. He also served as an MP in Aurora, Colorado at the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, then in Thailand with the 281st MPs at Amphoe Sattahip/Vayama, and in South Korea with the 110th MPs at Daejeon. In 1975, he left with an honorable military discharge and the rank of sergeant.
He returned to Colorado where he became a state trooper in north metro Denver and subsequently a city cop in suburban Thornton, Colorado. During his ten years as a police officer, he worked a variety of assignments, yet none stayed with him as much as his tour of duty in Vietnam.
Books
Cain's experiences in Vietnam inspired him to write a non-fiction manuscript entitled Saigon Alley. After nearly every publisher in New York City rejected the proposed book, Zebra Books' Michael Seidman (coincidentally also an ex-MP) offered Cain a four-book contract, but only if he would fictionalize his manuscript and increase the sex and violence. This ultimately became the cult classic Saigon Commandos series, which, beginning in 1983, ran to 12 books.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nicholas Cain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.