Will Cook (writer)

After Cook's death a number of posthumous books by him were released. In addition, his Everett byline had become valuable enough that Ballantine Books turned it into a house name for novels written by other authors. Among these was 1968's The Whiskey Traders, which was released under the Everett byline but written by Giles A. Lutz.

After the war Cook worked as a salvage worker, judo instructor, a bush pilot in Alaska, and as a deputy sheriff in California. Cook died of a heart attack in 1964 while building a schooner in which he and his wife Thea hoped to sail around the world.

In 1959, Cook used the penname Wade Everett for a series of paperbacks released by Ballantine Books, with these novels being reprinted numerous times over the following decades. Among these was The Last Scout, published in 1960 and considered one of his best novels. The novel is about an unrepentant hell raiser who comes to Deadwood to live with his daughter's family. Other notable books of his include The Wind River Kid (Fawcett, 1958), where the main character of The Last Scout is now a drunk who gets thrown into the job of sheriff, and The Wranglers (Fawcett, 1960), about an older horse-breaker and his partner who travel to monument country in Southern Utah while dealing with personal issues.

Cook's 1959 novel Comanche Captives inspired the 1961 John Ford film Two Rode Together, with the novel being re-released that year as a movie tie-in by Bantam Books in the United States and as a hardcover in the United Kingdom.

Cook started writing westerns in 1951 and published 100 short stories and 50 novels before dying at the age of 42.

William Everett Cook (1921 – July 1964), was a western writer who used the pen names Will Cook, James Keene, Wade Everett and Frank Peace. Called "a master western storyteller," Cook published dozens of short stories and 50 novels before his death at age 42. A number of his stories and novels were turned into Hollywood westerns, including the 1961 John Ford film Two Rode Together.