Brown, Dale 1956-

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Brown, Dale 1956-

PERSONAL:

Born November 2, 1956, in Buffalo, NY; son of Francis D. (an electrician) and Lois A. Brown; married Jean R. Moses, February 25, 1978 (marriage ended); married; wife's name Diane; children: Hunter. Education: Pennsylvania State University, B.A., 1978. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, skiing, scuba diving, and hockey; participates in numerous organizations in support of law enforcement and literacy.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Lake Tahoe, NV. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. U.S. Air Force, 1978-86; became captain; served in Strategic Air Command. Writer. Dale F. Brown, Sacramento, CA, founder and owner, 1987—. Director and volunteer pilot for AirLifeLine Volunteer Medical Transportation.

MEMBER:

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Air Force Association, U.S. Naval Institute, Writers Guild, Sacramento County Sheriffs Air Squadron.

WRITINGS:

Flight of the Old Dog, Donald I. Fine (New York, NY), 1987.

Silver Tower, Donald I. Fine (New York, NY), 1988.

Day of the Cheetah, Donald I. Fine (New York, NY), 1989.

Hammerheads, Donald I. Fine (New York, NY), 1990.

Sky Masters, Donald I. Fine/Putnam (New York, NY), 1991.

Night of the Hawk, Donald I. Fine/Putnam (New York, NY), 1992.

Chains of Command, Putnam (New York, NY), 1993.

Storming Heaven, Putnam (New York, NY), 1994.

Shadows of Steel, Putnam (New York, NY), 1996.

Fatal Terrain, Putnam (New York, NY), 1997.

The Tin Man, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Battle Born, Random House Large Print (New York, NY), 1999.

Warrior Class, Putnam (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Jim DeFelice) Dale Brown's Dreamland, Berkley Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Wings of Fire, Putnam (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Jim DeFelice) Nerve Center, Berkley Books (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Jim DeFelice) Razor's Edge, Avon Books (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Jim DeFelice) Dale Brown's Dreamland: Piranha, Jove Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Air Battle Force, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2003.

Plan of Attack, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Jim DeFelice) Dale Brown's Dreamland: Strike Zone, Avon (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Jim DeFelice) Dale Brown's Dreamland: Armageddon, Jove Books (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Jim DeFelice) Dale Brown's Dreamland: Satan's Tail, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Act of War, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Jim DeFelice) End Game, Harper Torch (New York, NY), 2006.

Edge of Battle: A Novel, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2006.

Strike Force: A Novel, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2007.

Member of research advisory panel, Aviation Week magazine, 1990—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dale Brown is known for his military-hardware thrillers that often feature resourceful pilot Patrick McLanahan. Brown, who rose to the rank of captain during his career in the U.S. Air Force, turned to writing while still in the service as a fighter pilot. He left the Air Force in 1986 and obtained a literary agent. The next year, Brown's Flight of the Old Dog was published by the Donald I. Fine company. Subsequent books have all drawn heavily on the author's military knowledge and experiences. Brown commented in WB magazine that "the underlying theme in all my books is to take [military] technology that's on the drawing board or is just being introduced in testing phases, project four or five years into the future when these new devices will be operational and write about how these brand-new systems would be used."

Flight of the Old Dog depicts a Cold War confrontation replete with laser weaponry and complicated technology. The conflict begins when the Soviets brazenly fire on an American craft. The United States responds by dispatching technologically advanced bombers. A high-tech battle ensues during which the Soviets repel the U.S. forces with a powerful laser. In addition to driving the aircraft away, the laser also significantly damages the Americans' defense system. Desperate, the Americans concoct a last-ditch plan in which Old Dog, a modified B-52 bomber, flies to the Siberian source of the Soviet laser and attempts the destruction of the enemy's operations. Navigating Old Dog is Patrick McLanahan, an eccentric and occasionally unorthodox bombardier, who risks considerable danger in the Soviet skies. W.E.B. Griffin, writing in the Washington Post Book World, commended Brown for his "remarkable" storytelling skill and proclaimed Flight of the Old Dog a "delightful, superbly crafted adventure tale."

Brown followed Flight of the Old Dog with Silver Tower, a futuristic account of U.S.-Soviet antagonism. In this 1988 novel, underhanded Soviet leaders authorize an attack on their own Middle East forces. They then exploit the ensuing chaos as justification for an invasion of Iran, a nation rich in petroleum reserves. Meanwhile, the entire Soviet escapade has been tracked by military officers and scientists aboard an American space station, the Silver Tower. When the Soviets discover that the station has used its advanced technology to undermine the Iranian invasion, armed cosmonauts are dispatched to eliminate the occupants of the Silver Tower. The Soviet presence within the space station soon becomes a bloody one, and only a young general named Jason Saint-Michael and Ann Page, a scientist managing the station's laser weaponry, survive to foil the Soviet plot. Terry Brown, in his Chicago Tribune Books review of Silver Tower, called the book "fun, and entertaining," and acknowledged that Brown explores "some troublesome, provocative issues."

Day of the Cheetah, Brown's next novel, is one of his most popular. The setting is 1996, and a murderous Soviet agent has infiltrated an American project that is developing an advanced jet fighter. Code-named Dreamstar, the experimental plane operates via a computer linked to the pilot's nervous system, creating a symbiosis between man and machine. The Soviet spy steals Dreamstar and thus poses a grave threat to America's national security. As in Flight of the Old Dog, Patrick McLanahan is recruited to thwart the Soviets. He is assigned a developmental F-15 fighter that is a less-sophisticated version of Dreamstar. Complex aerial pyrotechnics ensue as McLanahan vies with the Soviet agent for supremacy of the skies and the safety of the free world.

Published in 1989, Day of the Cheetah proved to be a major success for Brown. During that year it placed on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks. Among the book's enthusiasts is Frederick Busch, who reported in Chicago Tribune Books on the novel's "richness of detail" and its "well-done" aerial finale. Newgate Callendar affirmed in the New York Times Book Review that "the flying sequences are terrific. Authentic and gripping, they will have you breathing a bit heavy." And a WB reviewer described Day of the Cheetah as "a nail-biting, sophisticated aerial combat story beyond compare."

"Everything I write about really exists," Brown remarked to David Finkle in Publishers Weekly. "Whether it exists in just a project paper or exists in a laboratory or exists on a flight line, it exists somewhere." Commenting on his inspiration for Day of the Cheetah, Brown continued: "There exists a laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH, that has a device whereby the pilot doesn't have to manually activate any switches. He can activate a switch just by thinking about it. I saw it on a Nova program several years ago, I got a transcript and the videotape of the show, and then I went out to Wright-Patterson to poke around in the laboratories. They told me that this new technology was ten to fifteen years from even coming into any sort of operational development…. That was the immediate germ of a story."

In his 1990 novel Hammerheads, Brown depicted American military efforts to keep drug smugglers in check. The plot begins as a savvy admiral convinces the American president to develop a fighting unit authorized to destroy any unidentified aircraft seeking to penetrate U.S. air space. The drug dealers respond by populating their aircraft with children, thus defying American forces to destroy innocent lives. Callendar, in his New York Times Book Review assessment, noted that on a "1 to 100" scale the action in Hammerheads ranks a "95."

Brown's Sky Masters is another novel featuring renegade navigator Patrick McLanahan. During the 1994 time frame of this novel, international demands have compelled the withdrawal of American forces from the Philippines. This action, however, holds drastic repercussions, for Chinese forces soon attempt an occupation of disputed territories in the area. The Chinese, Filipino, and American forces clash in a major battle for control of the regions. McLanahan is enlisted to command an aerial force assigned to destroy the invading Chinese fleets. The mission is full of danger and results in adventure for McLanahan and his crew. According to Callendar, Sky Masters is "full of action."

In the following year, Brown published Night of the Hawk, a novel evoking the tensions of post-Soviet politics. Set in Lithuania in the near future, the novel features David Luger, a character presumed to have been killed in Brown's first novel, Flight of the Old Dog. It transpires that Luger has been brainwashed by Soviet scientists in order to aid them in developing an advanced bomber. The U.S. government, in the person of Luger's former commander, General Brad Elliot, attempts to rescue the brainwashed American while simultaneously aiding Lithuania against a forthcoming attack from neighboring Belarus.

Brown's next novel, Chains of Command, similarly features a post-Soviet crisis. The plot concerns the struggle over the fate of the Ukraine as it seeks NATO membership while under the threat of conquest from a Russia run by hardliners. With the likelihood of an imminent nuclear war, two American pilots, Major Becky Furness and Colonel Darren Mace, employ the highly sophisticated hardware of F-111's to avert disaster. A Publishers Weekly reviewer judged that "the cockpit scenes ably synthesize combat action and technical description, but the novel's plot shifts uneasily" among the various storylines.

A purely domestic setting is featured in Brown's 1994 tale, Storming Heaven. It concerns the efforts of government agencies to protect the American public from a fantastically wealthy smuggler who has embarked on a program of bombing civilian airports as a means of revenge on the Air Force. Publishers Weekly echoed the sentiments of most critics when its reviewer noted that while the issues Brown explores are "provocative," readers looking for light entertainment will be disappointed by the author's "political biases and heavy-handed sarcasm."

Shadows of Steel, Brown's next work, once again features the exploits of pilot Patrick McLanahan. The action centers on the protagonist's mission to fly a B-52 into Iranian airspace and rescue members of an American spy ship captured by a freshly armed and belligerent Iran. A Kirkus Reviews contributor commended Brown's "state-of-the-art action" and called the author "a master of the future-shock game."

Though McLanahan has settled down and is happily anticipating imminent parenthood in The Tin Man, the novel is no less packed with adventure than the previous McLanahan books. Set in Sacramento, the novel follows McLanahan's attempt to stop his nemesis, Gregory Townsend, from wreaking havoc in an attempt to wrest control of the illegal amphetamine business. In a starred review, a writer for Publishers Weekly commended Brown for showing "the dark side of vigilante justice," adding that the book "shows how the power to survive and to commit violence is both painful and seductive."

Praise was more muted, however, for Brown's next two novels. In Battle Born, McLanahan is back in command of an Air Force team during the Second Korean War, initiated when a desperate North Korean pilot attempted to destroy Seoul with nuclear weapons. A Booklist reviewer complained that characters were "barely developed," while a contributor to Publishers Weekly found fault with the novel's "stilted" dialogue. Still, the reviewer noted that "Brown's strongest suit … has always been his ability to generate tension through highwire aeronautics and technological breakthroughs, and in this tale he flourishes." Warrior Class, set immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union, has McLanahan dealing with Russian drug lord Pavel Kazanov, who is plotting to build an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly described the book as "another flag-waving, jargon-heavy, air combat whopper," and expressed disappointment that Brown "lets copious descriptions of military gadgets and procedures take precedence over action." Gilbert Taylor, in Booklist, suggested that "Brown's formula may be showing" in this novel but concluded that it had enough popular appeal to please the author's many fans.

In 2001, Brown's writing took a somewhat different direction with the publication of Dale Brown's Dreamland, a novel cowritten with Jim DeFelice and featuring a new cast of military characters. Dreamland is a location in the Nevada desert where researchers design hightech weapons and aircraft. A spy, however, has infiltrated the facility and weakened Pentagon support for its programs, and it is up to Lt. Col. Tecumseh "Dog" Bastian, with his daughter, Capt. Breanna Bastian Stockard, and her husband, ace pilot Maj. Jeff "Zen" Stockard, to set things right. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer commented that even die-hard fans of the genre will "marvel" at the novel's thrilling and fast-paced action, which takes the team as far afield as Somalia.

The Dreamland team returns in Dale Brown's Dreamland: Piranha. In this installment, they are assigned to work on an underwater robot. However, this mission is complicated when they are sent to the China Sea to keep surveillance on a possible rift between the Chinese and Indians. Then, when the Dreamland team comes under fire from the Chinese, things quickly heat up. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that "the book's overwhelming number of acronyms may discourage new readers, but fans of the series should have no complaints."

McLanahan is back in action in the 2002 Wings of Fire, in which the intrepid pilot attempts to stop the Libyan takeover of an Egyptian oilfield. Though he has his doubts about signing on for a foreign country, his company, Sky Masters Inc., is badly in need of hard cash. The price of the mission, however, ultimately includes his brother's life, in this tale that includes "well-written" characters, "exciting" action, and an "engrossing" storyline, according to Mostly Fiction reviewer Cindy Lynn Speer. Similarly, a Publishers Weekly contributor called the novel a "white-knuckle read from start to finish."

In Air Battle Force, McLanahan is battling the Taliban, who plan to take over the oil of Turkmenistan and thereby start a worldwide energy crisis. A Publishers Weekly reviewer had high praise for that title, terming it a "page-turning delight." Plan of Attack finds the aerial hero attempting to save the United States from attack.

After being demoted for his actions in Air Battle Force, McLanahan attempts to redeem himself by alerting his commanders to a threatened bomber attack on the U.S. by the Russian Federation. Booklist contributor David Pitt wrote: "For fans of over-the-top, gut-wrenching thrillers, this one's a winner." Likewise, a Publishers Weekly reviewer praised this as a "pulse-pounding, fact-filled read." The contributor went on to term Brown the "grand master of his genre."

In his 2007 thriller, Strike Force: A Novel, Brown uses current geopolitical matters to inform his work. Here Iran and Russia have renewed relations. Iran hopes to get nuclear technology out of the deal while Russia wants a base of power in the Middle East. When it is clear that Iran has a nuclear arsenal, the United States launches its fighter planes against that country and McLanahan is called upon to participate. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that "techno-thriller fans and aviation buffs will be well rewarded."

With Act of War and Edge of Battle: A Novel, Brown focuses on Task Force TALON, an elite American team that is battling a Russian terrorist group. In Edge of Battle, the Russians are attempting to infiltrate terrorists through the Mexican border. "Action junkies for whom characterization is not a priority will zip through this near-future techno-thriller," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Brown's successful thrillers have earned him comparisons to writer Tom Clancy, an association Brown finds flattering. He remarked in WB: "If I can be half as good as Tom Clancy I'll be thrilled…. His stuff is amazing. If I had to differentiate between our styles, though, I'd say that the major difference between my books and Tom Clancy's is that I was in the military for eight years and did a lot of flying during that time. When I write about dogfighting, I've actually done it. That's not a negative for Tom Clancy. It's just that my information base sets my writing apart, I think."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bestsellers 89, Issue 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Reginald, Robert, Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature, 1975-1991, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1997, Roland Green, review of Fatal Terrain, p. 1654; May 1, 1998, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Tin Man, p. 1477; September 1, 1999, Gilbert Taylor, review of Battle Born, p. 7; March 1, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Warrior Class, p. 1187; May 1, 2002, George Cohen, review of Wings of Fire, p. 1443; June 1, 2004, David Pitt, review of Plan of Attack, p. 1697; May 15, 2007, David Pitt, review of Strike Force: A Novel, p. 25.

Books, autumn, 1998, review of Fatal Terrain, p. 24; spring, 1999, review of The Tin Man, p. 22; June 2, 2007, Kristin Kloberdanz, review of Strike Force, p. 8.

Chicago Tribune Books, May 22, 1987, Terry Brown, review of Silver Tower; June 25, 1989, Frederick Busch, review of Day of the Cheetah, p. 10.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1992, review of Night of the Hawk, p. 683; May 1, 1993, review of Chains of Command, p. 544; May 15, 1994, review of Storming Heaven, p. 644; May 15, 1996, review of Shadows of Steel, p. 704; May 15, 2002, review of Wings of Fire, p. 701; April 15, 2003, review of Air Battle Force, p. 550.

Library Journal, June 15, 1994, Edwin B, Storming Heaven, p. 92; June 1, 1997, Elsa Pendleton, review of Fatal Terrain, p. 144; October 15, 1999, Patrick J. Wall, review of Battle Born, p. 103; June 15, 2002, Patrick Wall, review of Wings of Fire, p. 93; June 1, 2003, Robert Conroy, review of Air Battle Force, p. 163; April 15, 2004, Michael T. Fein, review of Air Battle Force, p. 146; April 15, 2007, Robert Conroy, review of Strike Force, p. 70.

M2 Best Books, April 23, 2004, "Thriller Writer Pleads Guilt to Tax Fraud."

New York Times, May 15, 2007, "Writes Thrillers, Flies a Cessna," p. 12.

New York Times Book Review, July 26, 1987, review of Flight of the Old Dog, p. 16; September 17, 1989, Newgate Callendar, review of Day of the Cheetah, p. 30; August 19, 1990, Newgate Callendar, review of Hammerheads, p. 17; August 18, 1991, Newgate Callendar, review of Sky Masters, p. 13; November 13, 1994, "Tiger in a Lion's Den: Adventures in LSU Basketball," p. 58.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 1989, David Finkle, review of Day of the Cheetah, p. 281; June 22, 1990, review of Hammerheads, p. 45; July 19, 1991, review of Sky Masters, p. 38; June 1, 1992, review of Night of the Hawk, p. 49; May 17, 1993, review of Chains of Command, p. 62; May 13, 1996, review of Shadows of Steel, p. 56; May 19, 1997, review of Fatal Terrain, p. 65; April 20, 1998, review of The Tin Man, p. 49; September 20, 1999, review of Battle Born, p. 70; April 23, 2001, review of Warrior Class, p. 50; May 14, 2001, review of Dale Brown's Dreamland, p. 58; July 1, 2002, review of Wings of Fire, p. 55; April 21, 2003, review of Air Battle Force, p. 39; July 28, 2003, review of Dale Brown's Dreamland: Piranha, p. 84; April 19, 2004, review of Plan of Attack, p. 41; March 27, 2006, review of Edge of Battle: A Novel, p. 59; July 10, 2006, review of Edge of Battle, p. 77; March 26, 2007, review of Strike Force, p. 63.

Washington Post Book World, July 26, 1987, W.E.B. Griffin, review of Flight of the Old Dog, p. 1; July 4, 1993, review of Chains of Command, p. 6.

WB, July-August, 1989, review of Day of the Cheetah.