Fred Allhoff

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Fred Allhoff (June 11, 1904 – November 11, 1988) was an American magazine writer known for his Liberty pieces in the 1930s and 1940s. His corruption exposé The Lid Off Los Angeles (1939) helped make him famous and led to a libel lawsuit that was settled in 1943. He also wrote Lightning in the Night (1940), a serial about a possible Axis victory in World War II. A 1936 Liberty article series, Tracking New York's Crime Barons, inspired the 1938 film I Am the Law.

Allhoff was born in Dayton, Ohio, as Charles Frederick Allhoff. He was an only child; his father worked as a bookkeeper for a printing company and later as an insurance agent, and his mother died when he was young, with his maternal aunt helping raise him. By 1930 he was working as a newspaper reporter in Dayton and/or Cleveland. He married Pauline in 1931 in New York.

In 1940 he lived on Long Island and worked as a writer. In 1945 he moved to Coral Gables, Florida, where he continued writing. Around 1948 he and his new wife bought 16 acres near the Caloosahatchee River. In 1950 he was living in Lee, Florida, with his second wife and working as a fiction writer; he may have gone into real estate in Miami in the 1960s. Lightning in the Night was republished as a book in 1979. Fred Allhoff died in Florida in 1988.