[9] Brinkley was also a staff writer, correspondent, and assistant editor for Life magazine from 1951 to 1958, and a member of the National Press Club until his death in 1993.

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.

[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.

In March 1988, Brinkley published his last work, The Last Ship, a post-apocalyptic fiction novel dealing with the sailors of the USS Nathan James (DDG-80), a fictional United States Navy guided missile destroyer which survives a brief, full-scale global nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[16][17][18] On November 22, 1993, after suffering from a major depressive disorder for several years, Brinkley committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates at his home in McAllen, Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico.