Biography of Alan Cook

After spending more than a quarter of a century as a pioneer in
the computer industry, Alan Cook is well into his second
career as a writer. He has written many mystery-suspense
novels and 2 children's/YA books. In addition, he has
written books about walking adventures and a book with
quotations about freedom by famous people.

Rocky Road to Denver

Roger McAllister has always been a sensible person living a
sensible life, but after his globe-trotting wife is killed
in a plane crash in 1984, he wants to get away from his job
as an accountant for a while, and agrees to participate in a
walk from Los Angeles to Denver as a marketing gimmick for Zeus Shoes.

Roger doesn’t realize that the other participants and the walking
conditions (from beach to desert to mountains) will take him out
of his comfort zone, and that the walk will produce dizzying
highs and sub-basement lows in both altitude and his personal feelings.

The other walkers include a struggling female writer, an under-dressed
model who corrects people’s grammar, someone from Roger’s distant
past, a lady’s man with a part-time English accent, and a triathlete
who appears to have lowered himself to come on the walk.

Then there is their support crew: an alcoholic ex-car-racing mechanic
who lives by the stopwatch, and his wife, an overweight but
good-hearted nurse who can do everything from bus-driving to cooking
to medical care.

The Zeus employees who drop in and out of their lives are an
Asian-American marketeer with similarities to Roger’s dead wife, and
an African-American photographer who is equally comfortable shooting
on the beach or while walking backward on a mountain road in the rain.

Roger will face temptation, hardship, and even peril along the way, but
he has been comforted and somewhat conflicted by the difficult-to-explain
fact that his dead wife seems to be keeping an eye on him.

In any case, win or lose, finish or fail, there’s no doubt that Roger’s
life won’t be the same after this adventure.

Death at Monksrest
Liz Reid is persuaded to fly to London when Charlie Ebersole, her
fellow worker in Los Angeles, sends her a poem from England about
an ancient curse put on the estate of Monksrest by a monk and
tells her that the sister of his English friend, Reggie, has been
murdered. It is the 1960s and Liz doesn't believe in curses, but
she is interested in history and has been looking for a reason to
go to England. When she arrives at Monksrest, beside the English
Channel, it appears at first that members of the family may be in
denial about what happened. But then Liz bonds with Lord Wheatley,
Reggie's father and agrees to get involved with finding the killer.
What she doesn't know is, curse or no curse, showing too much
interest in the murder investigation could get her killed.

East of the Wall
In the second Charlie and Liz novel Charlie Ebersole and Liz Reid
are recruited by the CIA to go into East Germany in June 1963, to
attempt to obtain intelligence about a secret project of the
Germans during World War II, about which information has been
lost. The Berlin Wall and the Stasi (East German secret police)
make this a perilous mission, but the two suspect that they are
the most appropriate people for the job.

Trust Me if You Dare
In the first Charlie and Liz novel, set in 1962,
Charlie is bored with his job as a securities analyst, so
after a weird weekend in Death Valley he jumps at the chance to
join the fraud division of International Investments in Los
Angeles. Given an assignment to uncover a possible Ponzi scheme,
he and his partner, Liz, travel to Buffalo, seeking evidence, and
then to Fort Lauderdale where somebody is plotting trouble for
them using Spring Break madness as a cover. The country of Cuba,
recently taken over by Fidel Castro, may be involved, and Charlie
might soon be wishing that he’s back in his nice safe desk in LA.

Your Move
In the seventh Carol Golden novel, somebody is killing
people who work for subsidiaries of conglomerate
Ault Enterprises and playing some kind of game while doing it. Carol Golden
is called on to help identify the killer because she has experience in
breaking codes and playing games. Amy O’Connor, a former scam artist and
long-distance hiker with an eye for men, becomes her partner by accident,
and together they search for clues in interesting places. The hunt takes
them to the tops of significant mountain peaks in the United States,
including Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental U.S., and to
other unusual locales such as the thinly populated Lost Coast region of
northern California. Carol finds that incidents in her past that are lost
to her because of her amnesia may come back to haunt her before she can win
this deadly game.

Fool Me Twice
In the sixth Carol Golden novel, Carol is asked to help Peter Griffenham
recover a chunk of money he's lost in a scam, but he doesn't want to go to the
police, and by the time she gets involved the prime suspect, a dazzling
redhead named Amy, has disappeared along with the money. Or has she? Perhaps
that was only the first chapter, to be followed by a much larger scam. Can
Carol help prevent chapter two?

Good to the Last Death
In the fifth Carol Golden novel, when Carol’s husband, Rigo, disappears, she not
only has to look for him but also elude the FBI at the same time since there is
evidence she may have been involved in his disappearance. She doggedly follows
a faint trail, keeping her location a secret from everybody except her friend,
Jennifer, a spy-in-training, who takes time off from her top-secret job to help
Carol. What they find out is that an organization of “good” people dedicated
to saving the earth from pollution and global warming may feel justified in
carrying out activities reminiscent of the worst tyrants of the twentieth
century as part of their solution, and that Rigo may be the first casualty.

Hit that Blot
The fourth Carol Golden novel finds Carol encountering the seamy world of tournament
backgammon (who knew?) and trying to solve two murders while being a good wife to
Rigo, who is now her husband. Appendices give tips on improving your backgammon
game.

Dangerous Wind
A 7-continent suspense novel.
In the third Carol Golden novel, Carol becomes involved with shady government operatives
who need her help in locating an old boyfriend she doesn't remember (because of her
amnesia). He is accused of plotting the downfall of the Western World. Carol begins to
wonder whether the world is really black and white as she tries to separate the good guys
from the bad guys. In a story eerily similar to recent headlines, we all have to question
whether government is helping us or enslaving us.

Relatively Dead
In the second Carol Golden mystery, Carol has regained her identity if not
most of her memory. She sets out to find some of her cousins, only to
discover that they seem to be marked for murder. On top of that, her
grandmother has Alzheimer's and has been targeted by the Grandparent
scam. One of her cousins may be involved in a Ponzi scheme. In California
Carol has a close call and realizes that she may be one of the targets.
She has to go to Edinburgh and back to get to the bottom of what's going
on, watching her back at all times.

Forget to Remember
Carol Golden isn't her real name. She doesn't remember her real name or
anything that happened before she was found, naked and unconscious, in a
Dumpster on the beautiful Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California.
After giving her some initial medical assistance, government at all levels
officially declares her a non-person and won't have anything more to do
with her. She can't get a job because she doesn't have a Social Security
number. She can't get a Social Security number because she doesn't have a
birth certificate. She can't drive because she doesn't have a driver's
license and she can't legally fly because she doesn't have a government-
issued I.D. And oh yes, whoever threw her in the Dumpster and left her
for dead may be coming back to finish the job.

Pictureland
The second Matthew and Mason adventure sends the boys into the land of a painting on their wall,
where all is not peaceful and serene as suggested by the painting. It is a dystopian world
that has been taken over by tyrants. The boys have to set it right with the help of Amy,
a girl in the picture.

Dancing with Bulls
In Alan's first young-adult/children's book--
Matthew and Mason are on vacation in Greece with their parents. While exploring the ruins
at Knossos Palace on the island of Crete, they wander off and suddenly find themselves at
Knossos in its prime, 4,000 years ago, when the Minoans were in power. Captured by guards,
they barely escape execution and are forced to join a team of slaves who are training as
bull dancers. That means they have to dance with a live bull in front of Minoan royalty.
Mason is picked to be a bull leaper along with a girl named Bracche. They have to leap onto
the bull's back and off again without getting gored. Will they be able to survive this ordeal,
and is there any chance they can escape and take the other members of their team with them?

Alan's short story, "Checkpoint Charlie" appears in the anthology,
Mystery Writers of America Presents Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue
from the Cold War (whew), edited by Jeffery Deaver and Raymond
Benson, and containing stories by your favorite mystery writers.

Run into Trouble
Silver Quill Award from American Authors Association
and named Best Pacific West Book by Reader Views.
Drake and Melody are teamed up to run a race along the California Coast
for a prize of a million dollars—in 1969 when a million is worth something.
Neither knows the other is in the race before it starts. They once did
undercover work together in England, but this information is supposed to be
top secret. The nine other pairs of runners entered in the race are world-class
marathoners, including a winner of the Boston Marathon. If this competition
isn’t enough, somebody tries to knock Drake out of the race before it
begins. But Drake and Melody also receive threats calculated to keep them
from dropping out. What’s going on? The stakes increase when startling events
produce fatalities and impact the race, leading them to ask whether the Cold
War with the USSR is about to heat up.

Honeymoon for Three
Silver Quill Award from American Authors Association
and named Best Mountain West Book by Reader Views.
Suspense takes a thrill ride. It is 1964, 10 years after Gary
Blanchard’s high school adventures in The Hayloft. He and his
love, Penny, are going on the trip of their lives, and, oh yes,
they’re getting married along the way. What they don’t know is
that they’re being stalked by Alfred, a high school classmate
of Penny who has a bellybutton fetish. The suspense crackles
amid some of the most scenic spots in the western United States,
including Lake Tahoe, Reno, Crater Lake, Seattle, and in Glacier,
Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as the
redwood trees and rocky cliffs of the northern California coast.

The Hayloft: a 1950s mystery, takes us back
to bobby sox, slow dancing, bomb shelters—and murder. Within two
weeks after starting his senior year of high school in the 1950s,
Gary Blanchard finds himself kicked out of one school and attending
another—the school where his cousin, Ralph, mysteriously died six
months before. Ralph’s death was labeled an accident, but when Gary
talks to people about it, he gets suspicious. Did Ralph fall from the
auditorium balcony, or was he pushed? Had he found a diamond necklace,
talked about by cousins newly arrived from England, that was
supposedly stolen from Dutch royalty by a common ancestor and lost for
generations? What about the principal with an abnormal liking for
boys? And are Ralph’s ex-girlfriends telling everything they know?

Hotline to Murder, his California mystery, takes place
at a listening hotline in beautiful Bonita Beach, California.
Tony Schmidt and Shahla Lawton don't know what they're getting
into when they sign up as volunteer listeners. But when Shahla's
best friend is murdered, it's too late for them to back out.

Alan's Lillian Morgan mysteries, Catch a Falling Knife and
Thirteen Diamonds, explore the secrets of retirement
communities. They feature Lillian, a retired mathematics
professor from North Carolina, who is smart, opinionated,
and skeptical of authority. She loves to solve puzzles,
even when they involve murder.

Alan’s short story, “Hot Days, Cold Nights,” appears in the
Mystery Writers of America anthology, A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime,
edited by Jeffery Deaver.

Aces and Knaves, available digitally, is a California
mystery for gamblers and baseball card collectors.

Alan splits his time between writing and walking, another
passion. His inspirational book,
Walking the World: Memories and Adventures,
has information and adventure in equal parts. It has been named
one of the Top 10 Walking Memoirs and Tales of Long Walks.

He is also the author of
Walking to Denver, a light-hearted fictional account of a walk he did.

Freedom's Light: Quotations from History's Champions of Freedom,
contains quotations from some of our favorite historical
figures about personal freedom. And The Saga of Bill the Hermit
is a narrative poem about a hermit who decides that the single
life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Alan lives with his wife, Bonny, on a hill in Southern California.

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