His family moved often as a child, his father being a train dispatcher with frequent new assignments.
[1][2] 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.
In the meantime, he was writing as a free-lance, selling to such publications as the National Catholic Reporter.
[1] Cook's first book was a nonfiction work, The Beat Generation, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1971.
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.
[1] His final books, published posthumously, were Young Will: The Confessions of William Shakespeare[3] and a Fielding book, Rules of Engagement, for which his widow and writer John Shannon put on the finishing touches.