Frank Lucius Packard (1877-1942) was a Canadian author who published a significant body of work in American pulp magazines in the early part of the 20th century. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he was one of the first Canadian writers to gain an international readership.
Although he trained as a civil engineer and initially worked throughout North America for various railroads, fiction writing was his true calling. He drew on his railroad experience for background in many early stories. This gave them an air of realism missing from many works by contemporaries.
He first breakthrough success was his 1914 novel, The Miracle Man, which sold quite well, but that would be eclipsed by the detective novel The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1917) which became an international best-seller. He rushed to wri
