After his tenure as an officer in the U.S. Navy, Brinkley wrote and published his first novel, Quicksand (1948). In 1954, Brinkley published his only non-fiction book, The Deliverance of Sister Cecelia, a biography of a Czechoslovakian nun based on her memoirs as recited to him. The novel was later adapted into a 1955 episode[which?] of Climax!.[citation needed] In 1956, he released the best-selling novel and perhaps his most prominent work, Don't Go Near the Water, a comedy about U.S. Navy sailors serving in the South Pacific during World War II. Don't Go Near the Water was adapted into film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Don't Go Near the Water (1957), which was released in theaters across the United States and became both a critical and commercial success.[11][12][13]
In peacetime Lieutenant Commander Clinton T. Nash had been in charge of a Merill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane office in the Midwest. Not long after Pearl Harbor he had been commissioned directly from his brokerage office without the corrupting effect of any intervening naval training.
In 1961, Brinkley published The Fun House, a comedy novel set in the offices of a picture magazine similar to Life. The following year, Brinkley published the novel, The Two Susans (1962), which was followed by The Ninety and Nine (1966), a novel detailing life on board a United States NavyLST operating in the Mediterranean Sea and at Anzio during World War II.[15]
In 1971, Brinkley moved to McAllen, Texas, where he lived until his death in 1993. Throughout the 1970s, he only wrote one novel, Breakpoint (1978), about tennis.
^Snowden, Holly Shelton (2013). "In Memoery of David Shelander". Life Legacy. Pensacola, Florida: Harper-Morris Memorial Chapel. Retrieved April 19, 2014.