Frank Packard (1877-1942) was a Canadian novelist. Born in Montreal he was one of the first Canadian writers to gain the attention of an international readership. He was trained as a civil engineer and worked in the US and Canada for several railroads. He used his railroad experience in some of his early novels and short stories. He achieved great success with his second novel “The Miracle Man” in 1914. In 1917 he published another best-seller, a detective novel called “The Adventures of Jimmy Dale” which he turned into a series of four more novels. In order to add realism to his books he joined police raids and drifted around the streets of New York which allowed him to add an air of authenticity for his stories. By 1942, the Jimmy Dale series had sold three million copies, was adapted for a silent movie and was turned into a CBC radio play. Packard travelled to the South Seas in 1912 and he used the setting for some of his novels such as “The Gold Skull Murders” and “Two Stolen Idols”. Packard’s prolific work shows attention to local detail that adds colour to books that otherwise verged on the formulaic. (Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature)