Leslie McFarlane's 1976 autobiography, Ghost of the Hardy Boys, includes a scene in which his son asks him if he had actually read all the children's books in his library. "Read them"" he answers. "I wrote them." Thus does his son learn that his father is probably the best-selling Canadian author of all time.

Leslie Charles McFarlane was born in Carleton Place, Ontario, on 25 October 1902. The son of John Henry McFarlane, an elementary-school principal, and the former Rebecca Barnett, McFarlane began his literary career as a reporter for the Haileyburian, the local newspaper of Haileybury, the small town in northern Ontario where he spent his childhood. From there, he went on to other Canadian newspaper jobs and finally moved to Massachusetts, where he became a writer for the Springfield Republican. In 1926 he answered an advertisement seeking an experienced fiction writer who was willing to work from the publisher's outlines...