Author David Morrell: Rambo Was Just The Beginning

David Morrell

David Morrell published First Blood in 1972. It introduced John Rambo. The original Rambo was wounded, furious, and lost. The story was a pressure cooker.

Vietnam was still fresh. America was jumpy. The country felt like it was cracking at the seams. And here was a novel about a returning veteran who couldn’t fit back into normal life, colliding with a small-town system that didn’t know what to do with him.

 

Morrell wasn’t guessing about any of this. He taught literature at the University of Iowa and knew how stories work and what themes do when you tighten them like a vise. He just aimed that knowledge at a new target: suspense.

 

Morrell taught American literature at the University of Iowa from 1970 to 1986, became a full professor in 1977, and wrote bestselling novels during that same stretch.

 

So picture it. He lectured on American writing and culture during the day… then went home and wrote chase scenes, manhunts, and plots with real teeth. 

The funny thing was that the two lives never crossed. I took two of his American Literary Classics courses in 1978 and 1979, and Rambo never leaked in, though it was just below the surface. Students whispered about it in the hallways and just before he popped in.

 

Looking at him, you’d never know Morrell was a tough guy. What I remember is a short, soft-spoken guy who always wore a vest and a mustache. No explosive personality like his characters unless there was something evil boiling deep below the surface. So, where’d Rambo come from?

 

You don’t “wait for inspiration” when you’ve got class at 9 a.m. You write when you can because you have to. That pressure is why Morrell’s books move the way they do. He knows always that the clock is ticking.

 

He researched his books. Not in a casual “Google it” way. More in a “prove it, verify it, build it right” way. That habit never left him. Even years later, the University of Iowa would describe him as “fastidiously researched,” with stories that aimed to stick in the reader’s mind after the thrills were over. That’s a professor’s fingerprint.

 

In a university town like Iowa City, his books were considered disposable. Not something a professor could build a reputation on.

 

Morrell didn’t apologize for the stories he told. He just wrote them. Better than most people thought possible.

 

Everything changed in the 1980s. First Blood became a major movie starring Sylvester Stallone in 1982. Most guys would have stopped teaching and chased fame in Hollywood.

 

Morrell stayed at the University of Iowa for several more years. He retired from teaching in 1986 and became a full-time writer.

 

When people talk about David Morrell, they usually lead with Rambo.

 

Fair enough. But  Iowa shaped how Morrell worked. He had to write around classes, grading, and a nonstop schedule. That forced discipline. It also trained his mind to build stories with theme and structure, not luck. Iowa also gave him the odd tension of being a professor in a town that didn’t fully respect suspense novels.

 

After First Blood, he kept writing hard books with the same tight pacing. The danger stayed personal, and the fear close. His characters were still pushed into corners, forcing them to move or break. The stories kept that “no escape” feeling.

 

Morrell’s later books show how much he leans on research. He builds the story on actual systems and genuine history. That’s why the action feels sharper. Like it could happen.

 

The Brotherhood of the Rose and The Fraternity of the Stone aren’t “movie spy” stories. Morrell writes like he studied how power works, how people get trained, and how control gets enforced. The thriller parts fly, but the world underneath feels real.

 

In The Fifth Profession, the kidnapping and security world feels planned out: not made up. The League of Night and Fog digs into the past, using history like proof, not decoration.

 

Murder as a Fine Art only works if the Victorian details are right. Morrell makes them right. The streets. The fear. The way people think. Even when he goes bigger in later books, the foundation stays solid. He researches first. Then he lets the story run.