Praise for Mark Allen's Duncan Walsh novels


"A good old fashioned mystery novel."

"The perfect candidate to star in his own mystery series."

"Relatable, charmingly witty, and admirably gutsy."

Six Months of September

"Second story. Ten o' clock news. Wednesday. Student missing, police looking. 

A foul tempered detective in a cheap suit, interviewed by a five dollar blonde in a thousand dollar dress. "The first 48 hours are the most vital in any case," he said.

He didn't mention twice that time had passed." 

An old school mystery with a millennial perspective, a woman’s disappearance unlocks dark secrets in Mark Allen’s brisk detective novel, Six Months of September. Duncan Walsh gets fired from his job at Channel 8 news, after popping a local icon in the face. Contemplating life, he spends his days wandering the Museum Campus, where he meets and befriends a sexy student named Agnes. When Agnes unexpectedly goes missing, Duncan insists he has nothing better to do than to track her down. 

"[T]he book's mystery is intriguing, what makes it truly successful is its lead character, Duncan, who's a relatable, charmingly witty and admirably gutsy narrator." KIrkus Reviews.


little village

"What are you telling me? What could possibly be worse than hearing there's a missing kid?"

"She's not the only one."

Duncan Walsh, Luis and Ginger are back in action. This time, Duncan spends most days buried in the minutiae involved in being the managing editor of their start-up blog, Vision: Chicago, while Ginger holds the enterprise afloat as the marketing and advertising wiz, and Luis provides the capital. 

With its small staff of unpaid interns, the Vision covers news, sports, politics, the art scene…and missing persons. So when Luis comes to Duncan with a case to investigate from the neighborhood he grew up in, there can only be one response.

A precocious nine-year-old girl has gone missing. She's undocumented. So are her parents. No one makes them a priority. So Duncan does. But to get into the dark underworld of human trafficking, the team is forced into an uneasy alliance with a notorious gang leader and drug dealer, Oscar Sosa. 

Navigating the dark underworld of human trafficking brings more surprising twists and turns, as Duncan asks just how vulnerable is the Windy City’s sizable community of undocumented immigrants?

"The hard-boiled detective genre gets a millennial makeover in this smart Chicagoland mystery."


Sin Debt

Sin Debt

It's time to pay up.


Fall, 2017


"Snappy, quirky - and eminently readable fun."

"I couldn't put this down."

"One of the best opening lines of a novel I've ever read."

"This young author has quickly grasped the gift of catchy dialogue"


© Mark Allen 2017