Books by Luke Allan

What this book is about: Luke Allan is a born story-teller, and in this novel he describes a locked room, of which the window considered as a means of escape offered little chance to a fugitive. Yet in this room murder was committed and in some manner the murderer contrived to escape. The occupants of the house were a curious collection of people. The owner-a rich man who ran a club for ex-criminals; his beautiful but mysterious sister, a big bruiser named Storey and a cook who obviously knew more than she was willing to tell, are among the chief characters. The unravelling of the threads leading to the murder is cleverly and neatly carried out, and the surprise ending makes a fitting conclusion to a most readable and exciting novel.

The half-breed Blue Pete and Rance Hewitt were old enemies and Rance was not the man to allow a debt of vengeance to go unpaid. Determined to get even with Pete, he laid a trap to take the half-breed across the border into RanceÕs own territory.The trick succeeded, and the two men came face to face in the way Rance liked to meet his enemiesÑhe armed with a quirt, and his adversary securely trussed up against any possible reprisal.Pete took his beating with sullen hatred; silently swearing to return blow for blow until Rance cringed for mercy. The unofficial arrival of Mahon of the Mounties speeded the moment of retribution as he and Pete fought their way to freedom.But before they left, Pete levelled the score in a quick and ruthless reckoning.

What this story is about The stranger in town would have been in a bad way had not Blue Pete intervened. Bruiser Salmon, who was dealing out the punishment, didn't take kindly to Pete's action but the 'forty-five' the half-breed nonchalantly fingered commanded obedience. Salmon swore to get even with Blue Pete. But Pete, scarred from a hundred fights, was not the man to be cowed by threats, especially when he heard the stranger's tale of a missing heir and of Salmon's part in a stick-at-nothing plot to gain a fortune. How Blue Pete settled the score and meted out his own kind of justice, is told in this action-paced story of flaying fists and burning bullets.

Blue Pete, in his role of undercover helper of the RCMP, once more sets out to bring justice and retribution to a group of bank-robbers who had held up a bank in Red Deer. Ring-leader of the bandits is Flying Cloud, an Indian with a forked tongue, who tries to outwit the half-breed on his trail and in doing so start a feud between two neighbouring camps. Mountain Stream, a wise chief, sees through Flying Cloud's game, and his friendship for Blue Pete remains unshaken. But Brown Tepee is won over by Flying Cloud's easy promises. He overcomes his fear of the long arm of the Mounties, and joins forces with Flying Cloud. But Blue Pete is more than a match for both of them. Time and again he foils their cunning moves to destroy him and his friends, and finally he is able to defeat them in the very moment of their triumph. Yet even Blue Pete has to learn afresh that he cannot accomplish all he sets out to do without help from Mira, the amazing white woman who married him and shares his wild, untamed life.

When Blue Pete intervened with the enraged ranchers to save Butch Dorman from the revenge he so richly deserved, Pete immediately became an object of suspicion himself. That suited Pete, because, although it meant hitting the lone trail in a hail of bullets, he saw a chance of the big reward offered for the capture of the rustlers whose depredations were making the ranchers desperate. But neither he, the ranchers, the rustlers nor the Mounties quite anticipated the climax of his daring escapade. This new Western yarn, in which Blue Pete, the most popular of all cowboy characters, scores all along the line, is the most thrilling of any that the author has yet written.

This story forms the psychological study of a young man who is both spiritually and morally down and out. He is sick of modern frivolities and seeks refuge in the Canadian Rockies. Here he meets the girl of his heart, who infuses new hope and life into his erstwhile jaded existence.

Guns RoarBank robberies follow each other in a noisy procession, through Luke Allan's pages. The waste of bank-clerk life is tragic, but a mysterious masked stranger does his best to balance the ledger by killing off the bandits and returning their loot "less a percentage for expenses." Who is the masked stranger? And who is the bold bandit. "Dolly" Morgan? The book will keep the reader guessing-and amused.

Into Medicine Hat, just before the year's big beef roundup, drift four cow-punchers from across the Border. Everything about Slick Jordan, their leader, stamps him as a dude, except the way he whirls a rope and handles his steel-dust broncho. When Jordan singles out Blue Pete for his attention, Inspector Barker, of the Mounted Police, has a hunch that trouble is about to follow in the wake of the newcomers. He learns how right his hunch was when Sergeant Mahon, Blue Pete's friend, reports on the strange happenings that delay the roundup. Blue Pete finds his time fully occupied keeping check on Jordan and his companions, who have hired out to the T-Inverted R and promptly ran foul of its foreman, Tully Mason. Secret attempts at murder and covert rustling across the Border step up the tempo of this new story in which the popular Blue Pete again proves that he can think faster than the next man, and that for him, at least, the dark expanse of the Cypress Hills holds no secrets.

THE JUNGLE CRIME The Jungle Restaurant, catering with its realistic atmosphere and subdued lights for the sensation-loving city night-life, is the scene of a brutal murder. Detective Muldrew, whom readers of Murder at Midnight will remember, is put in charge of the case, and succeeds in following a baffling trail through a series of thrilling episodes to a dramatic conclusion. Tiger Lillie, star reporter and leader of "the Gang" is involved, and he and his friends meet with many exciting adventures in their endeavours to clear up the mystery of the unknown murderer. A skilful, swiftly-moving "thriller" by a master of mysteries.

Few men reckoned on staying up in the Cypress Hills unless they needed a hide-out real bad. So when Blue Pete heard one night a wolf's cry from the hills that no wolf had throated, he figured he'd go on up and see who was hollering and why. And that started Pete on the trigger-taut tracking of the toughest and strangest bunch of bank-busters that had menaced Medicine Hat for quite a while. But Pete discovered too much, and the man who did that in the Cypress Hills usually lasted about as long as a stockyard steer. Another grand, action-paced yarn of the ever popular Blue Pete.

In this new Luke Allan story Blue Pete, that indomitable half-breed who works in his own fashion to uphold the law guarded by the red-coated Mounties, returns back over the Canadian border to the vast wilderness of canyon and gulch that is the Badlands of Montana. He is trailing a bunch of horse-thieves who have cut into the herds of the Lazy M and on their furtive way back to the border have stolen Whiskers, Blue Pete's celebrated pinto pony. It is war to the death, with Blue Pete's old friend Sergeant Mahon of the Mounties doffing his red coat and following a trail that is blazed by the fury of the half-breed's vengeance.

Blue Pete, secretly chosen by the Mounted Police to capture an Indian murderer, in his characteristic way picks up the trail and follows it into the mountains. He becomes involved in a bank-robbery that earns him a new and implacable enemy who dogs his path throughout the chase of the murderer-a perilous, unrelenting chase in the depth of winter. Disguised as an Indian, Blue Pete moves from tribe to tribe, helped and hindered by the red men. He faces zero cold, wild animals, and flying bullets, and all the time he must keep secret the task he works at. Finally, he faces a dilemma where duty and instinct struggle for mastery.

This exhilarating Western story describes how Blue Pete-"the most popular cowboy character in fiction"-bested Frenchy Thoreau, a cattle-thief and worse, with oddly chivalrous ideas but a killer as quick-witted as swift on the draw. On the prairies and mountain trails of the Canadian-U.S. border, rife with rustlers' feuds and treacherous bands of outlawed Indians, Blue Pete relentlessly stalked his dangerous quarry. At bay, Thoreau turned and struck with deadly precision, and Blue Pete, out manoeuvred and out-gunned, was jammed in the tightest corner of his rip-roaring career.

Strangway, from Scotland Yard, London, is forced to take leave as his superior suspects that a broken love affair is disturbing his work. The detective happens upon a mysterious beautiful stranger, and follows her only to find even more beautiful mystery in America.The story takes place in 1930s; a romantic thriller.

The Story:In this exhilarating, fast-moving yarn, Blue Pete, against the express wish of Inspector Barker of the Royal Mounted Police, sets out to avenge the brutal murder of a rancher and his wife. Once again, relying on his ready wit and the lightning draw of his heavy six-shooter, he justifies his action and beats the murderers-but only after he has found himself in the most desperate situation of his chequered career."Blue Pete," the critics agree, "is the most famous cowboy in fiction." His reckless, snap-shooting exploits have proved immensely popular in a score of thrilling novels. This new one is the equal of any.

When he arrived at Medicine Hat, Somers Randison's initiation into cowboy ways was both disillusioning and violent, and in a very short time he had succeeded in arousing the enmity of Gringo, a cunning, sharp-shooting Mexican half-breed, who swore vengeance on the interfering tenderfoot. Even when Randison joined forces with the Mounted Police to solve the mystery of Noisy Pangborn's murder he was constantly reminded that Gringo's words had been no idle threat. The tension snapped during the great cattle round-up, when Randison found himself face to face with his enemy. In the fight which followed and the subsequent stampede of maddened cattle Randison learned the true meaning of a fight to the finish against nature untamed. This is a full-blooded Western story, told at breakneck speed to the exhilarating accompaniment of thundering hooves and roaring gun-play.

This story opens in California from whence the scene is transferred to the picturesque Balearic Islands where the main drama takes place. It reveals the reactions of two young people-wage slaves-who are suddenly released from bondage by a substantial legacy, and shows how the even tenor of their lives was abruptly ended in the most romantic of surroundings. Although they were not married, Milly and Hall lived together, both happy in the knowledge of their mutual love, and content to forget the world and its attendant cares in their newly-created paradise. Yet looming up on the distant horizon a storm-cloud slowly approached, finally to burst in all its fury upon the unsuspecting couple. It is a dramatic and absorbing love story.

BLUE PETE WAS one of the smartest detective "guys" you could come across. He was the terror of all wrong¬doers, and there wasn't much that he would miss with a revolver. At the same time, he was human enough to love desperately. Blue Pete it a most fascinating character; you never know what he it going to do next. Luke Allan has written a book of breathless excitement and adventure.

The story tells of a house party, which, by way of novelty, is held at a summer camping the Canadian wilds. The camp, though delightful in the summer, is a grim and desolate spot in the winter, as the party soon find out. An atmosphere of eerieness and danger is cleverly created by the author, and leads up to a startling tragedy. The mystery surrounding the murder is complete at first, and its ultimate solution lacks nothing in the way of unexpectedness. Here we have excitement, murder, and a dramatic denouement in the best "thriller" tradition, but Luke Allan has this time given us more than the usual ration. The atmosphere of tension and danger which overhangs the characters throughout places this latest Luke Allan high up in the "thriller" class.

Claude Maughan, an Englishman, finding his late uncle has been swindled in a Canadian land deal, sets out to punish the land agent, Daniel Corfield. As soon as he arrives at Medicine Hat, he gets involved in the intricacies of Canadian life, and his adventures begin. There is his desperate fight with a prairie fire; his encounter with Inspector Barker, of the North-West Mounted Police; his meeting with Julia Kingsley, and how he saves her life in a dust storm; the disappearance of Julia's fiancé, Archie Wampole, and his determination to pocket the five thousand dollars reward Archie's father is offering for the return of his son.

Detective Gordon Muldrew is called to the prestigious Wanderers' Club in NYC because of a murder just inside the doors to the club. "The girl, they decided, was about twenty-four. She was beautiful, but with a beauty soiled and hardened by a make-up carefully but too liberally applied. Her clothes were expensive and becoming, and her hands were soft and white, with well-manicured nails."Miss Luscombe is a most mysterious person and every member at the club is a suspect. This fast paced search proves fatal for some and 'Tiger Lillie', ace reporter for The Star cannot keep up with all the action.

Tom Bristow fears for his life after turning 'State's Evidence' against a criminal gang. Inspector Muldrew has reasons to believe that one source of his fears may come from a Canadian connection. He and Star reporter, Tiger Lillie, travel to Ontario to look into the mystery. 1930s.

Rex Dalton is the son of a gangster. His father dies in front of him and Rex knows that it is murder and swears to catch the murderer. As he grows up, this heritage never leaves him, causing family problems. Will Rex ever free himself for the better?