Nicholas Cain Books In Order

Publication Order of Able Team Books

Publication Order of Chopper 1 Books

Publication Order of Little Saigon Books

Publication Order of War Dogs Books

Publication Order of Saigon Commandos Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Nicholas Cain
Nicholas Cain wrote action and adventure novels. He was born and raised in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

He first volunteered for the Vietnam War, in 1972, despite a high draft number of 363, serving as a military policeman until the year 1973. Nicholas was also an MP in Aurora, Colorado at the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center before being sent to Thailand to serve with the 281st MPs at Amphoe Sattahip/ Vayama. He also served with the 110th MPs while in South Korea at Daejeon. In the year 1975, he left with an honorable discharge with the rank of sergeant.

Before having a career in law enforcement. He was a state trooper in north metro Denver and later a city cop in Thornton, Colorado. During his ten years working as a cop, he worked all kinds of assignments, however none of them stayed with him nearly as much as the tour of duty he spent in Vietnam.

His experiences in Vietnam inspired him enough to pen a non-fiction manuscript called “Saigon Alley”. Just about every publisher in New York City rejected his proposed book. Zebra Books’ Michael Seidman, who was coincidentally also a former MP, offered Cain a four book deal, but only if he fictionalized the manuscript and upped the violence and sex. This is something that Zebra books had relied on and used as a selling point for all of their books.

It ultimately became the cult classic series of Cain’s called the “Saigon Commandos”, which has twelve books, all of which were published by Zebra Books. A critic called the “Saigon Commandos” books the “Hill Street Blues” of Vietnam.

The final three novels of the “Saigon Commandos” series, called “The Tet Trilogy”, are the culmination of everything he had learned as a writer and experienced while he was an MP. Some have said that the trilogy is among the best writing ever, either fiction or non-fiction, on the Vietnam War.

In these books, he uses real transcripts of MP jeep-to-jeep radio transmissions, which were taken from the records, official logs, and archives. He works them into the rather punchy dialogue.

He penned three of the “Able Team” books, which is a spin-off of Mack Bolan’s very popular “Executioner” series. His three books (“Kill Orbit” book 43, “Night Heat” book 44, and “Counterblow” book 46) were published under the Dick Stivers house name that was shared by many Gold Eagle authors.

Once he finished the “Vietnam Ground Zero series” (which was published as “Zebra Cube” in the “Heroes” trilogy) using the Robert Baxter pen name. This novel is the only one that he contributed to this series.

He created and penned the six-book series “Little Saigon”, however only four of the books would be published by Lynx Books of New York before Lynx had to shut down.

Nicholas also wrote the first eight books of the “Chopper-1” series for Ballantine Books, using the pen name Jack Hawkins (which is an Ivy Books house name) after penning the “War Dogs” books for Zebra, as Nik Uhernik.

After he wrote more than thirty books, he quit writing in the year 1990 so that he could become a private investigator based in Los Angeles. In less than a decade of output, he was able to quickly rack up quite a few action novels.

He also taught a course on getting anything on anyone, and penned two investigative manuals to go with it. The manuals were titled “So Your Wanna Be A Private Eye” and “Trick Questions (And Other Trade Secrets of an L. A. County P.I.)”. So even though he quit writing fiction, he didn’t give up on writing entirely.

For a book called “Whatnots!” by Eileen Birin. In the book, Cain talks about his book collecting habits as well as his love for Doc Savage. Along with Doc Savage, he said that Joseph Wambaugh, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jules Verne are major influences on his own writing. He also collects their books among quite a few others.

The ninth book of the series, called “Mad Minute”, was made into a movie by Roger Corman’s Concorde Studios that was called “Saigon Commandos”. It was written by Tom McElvery Cleaver and was directed by Clark Henderson, and was released in the year 1988. The movie was a direct to video release, but got a feature film release in foreign theaters under the title of “American Kommandos”.

Despite having Hollywood interest lead to a produced feature, he still became a victim of the lethal curse of the mid-list writer. The main symptoms of this include the small advances, an inability to breakout of the genre markets, and rarely (if ever) any of the royalty checks being big enough to spend a dirty weekend away.

Nicholas writes the “Little Saigon” series and the “War Dogs” series. His debut novel, called “War Dogs”, was released in the year 1984. He also writes under the names of Jonathan Cain, Nik Uhernik, Robert, Baxter, and Jack Hawkins. His work is from the action and thriller genres.

“Abel’s War” is the first novel in the “Little Saigon” series and was released in the year 1989. Introducing Lieutenant Luke Abel, a new breed of cop in a brand new type of war.

Little Saigon, California is the biggest community of Vietnamese immigrants in America. Formerly a quiet Los Angeles suburb in Orange County that was dedicated to both prosperity and hard work, has now become a war zone. The Asian crime lords terrorize legitimate businessmen with both murder and extortion. There are youth gangs patrolling the “Bolsa Strip” with loaded Uzis and hot cars, dealing both destruction and death in bloody battles over turf. Outgunned and outnumbered, regular cops are unable to keep peace.

This is why they need Police Lieutenant Luke Able. He is a former MP from the war-torn streets of Old Saigon, so he knows the culture, the language, and the people, as well as Viet-style guerilla crime.

When Abel and the rest of his men swing into action, both the lowlifes and the punks know that they are fighting.