Bruce Alexander Cook (1932 – November 9, 2003) was an American journalist and author who also wrote under the pseudonym Bruce Alexander, creating historical novels about a blind 18th-century Englishman and also a 20th-century Mexican-American detective.
Biography
Cook was born in 1932 in Chicago. His family moved often as a child, his father being a train dispatcher with frequent new assignments. He earned a degree in literature from Loyola University (Chicago).
His first wife was Catherine Coghlan, with whom he had three children, Catherine (Katy), Bob, and Ceci. He married concert violinist Judith Aller in 1994.
He served as a translator in the U.S. Army in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1950s, and also did public relations work. He joined the editorial staff of the National Observer in Washington D.C. in 1967, and covered movies, books, and music. When that newspaper folded, he became book editor of USA Today, the Detroit News, and then the Los Angeles Daily News (from 1984 to 1990). Archived 2008-11-18 at the Wayback Machine He was a senior editor at Newsweek. In the meantime, he was writing as a free-lance, selling to such publications as the National Catholic Reporter.
He died of a stroke November 9, 2003, in Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Hollywood, California.
Books
Cook's first book was a nonfiction work, The Beat Generation, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1971. A biography of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo followed in 1977, and in 2015 it was made into a film by the same name. His first novel was Chicago-based Sex Life, in 1978.
He wrote four novels featuring Los Angeles detective Antonio "Chico" Cervantes — Mexican Standoff, 1988, Rough Cut, 1990, Death as a Career Move, 1992, and Sidewalk Hilton, 1994. He also wrote a series of novels about the blind magistrate Sir John Fielding, the real-life founder of London's first police force.
His later nonfiction works were Listen to the Blues, a musical history, in 1973; Brecht in Exile, about the German writer Bertold Brecht, in 1983; and The Town That Country Built: Welcome to Branson, Missouri, in 1993. His final books, published posthumously, were Young Will: The Confessions of William Shakespeare and a Fielding book, Rules of Engagement, for which his widow and writer John Shannon put on the finishing touches.
<books in order, according to Rehoboth Beach Public Library and Amazon.com editions available to me: >
1. "Blind Justice" (1994) 323 pp.
2. "Murder in Grub Street" (1995) 276 pp.
3. "Watery Grave" (1996) 265 pp.
4. "Person or Persons Unknown" (1997) 279 pp.
5. "Jack, Knave and Fool" (1998) 279 pp.
6. "Death of a Colonial" (1999) 275 pp.
7. "The Color of Death" (2000) 279 pp.
8. "Smuggler's Moon" (2001) 247 pp.
9. "An Experiment in Treason" (2002) 324 pp.
10. "The Price of Murder" (2003) 257 pp.
11. "Rules of Engagement" (2005) 288 pp. Posthumously published.
References
- ^ Myrna Oliver, "Bruce Cook, 71; Wrote Mysteries Set in L.A., 18th Century England," Los Angeles Times. November 18, 2003.
- ^ "Bruce Alexander Cook, 71, Crime Writer", New York Times, November 16, 2003.
- Publisher's description of Young Will via the Library of Congress.
External links
- Author Website
- Interview with Tom Nolan in January magazine, fall 1999.
- Fantastic Fiction Author Page
| Sir John Fielding series by Bruce Alexander | |
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- American mystery writers
- American historical novelists
- Writers of historical fiction set in the modern age
- 2003 deaths
- 1932 births
- Novelists from Chicago
- Loyola University Chicago alumni
- USA Today people
- The Detroit News people
- Newsweek people
- American male novelists
- Writers of historical mysteries
- 20th-century American novelists
- 20th-century American male writers
- Novelists from Michigan
- 20th-century American non-fiction writers
- American male non-fiction writers
- 20th-century pseudonymous writers