author
Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
1877–1942
Best known for creating the masked gentleman-thief Jimmie Dale, this Canadian novelist turned his railroad and engineering background into brisk adventure and mystery fiction. His stories helped shape early 20th-century popular crime writing.
13 Audiobooks
The Miracle Man
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
Doors of the Night
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
From Now On
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
On the Iron at Big Cloud
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The White Moll
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Night Operator
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Sin That Was His
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Belovéd Traitor
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Wire Devils
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
Pawned
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
The Four Stragglers
by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
About the author
Born in Montreal in 1877, Frank L. Packard was a Canadian novelist who studied at McGill University and later at the University of Liège. Before becoming widely known as a writer, he worked as a civil engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and that experience fed directly into many of his early railroad stories.
Packard is remembered most for the Jimmie Dale tales, featuring the elusive Gray Seal, a character who became one of his biggest successes in magazines and books. Alongside those mysteries, he wrote adventure fiction and crime stories with fast pacing, vivid atmosphere, and a strong feel for the worlds he described.
He died in 1942 in Lachine, Quebec. Even now, he is often noted as an important early popular storyteller whose mix of suspense, action, and serial-style excitement helped keep readers coming back for the next installment.