Description

William Hulbert Footner (1879-1944) was born in Hamilton, Canada, and later moved to New York where he attended grade school in Manhattan but beyond that was self-educated. After an unsuccessful attempt at an acting career, he decided to become a journalist and author and took a post on the Calgary Morning Albertan where he remained for a year before setting off on a solo 3,000 mile canoe journey exploring the upper Peace River country in Alberta, paying his expenses by syndicating the story to several Canadian newspapers. He returned to Alberta in 1911 with a companion, exploring the source of the Hay River in the Northwest Territories in a canvas boat and later wrote many short stories and adventure novels based on his early canoe voyages which were serialised in various magazines prior to book publication, with some being adapted for film. He undertook no further expeditions following his marriage in 1916 and after producing a number of works in the genres of mystery, adventure and romance, began writing detective fiction in the 1920s, acquiring a faithful following in the US, UK and other countries, which helped support his ever-growing family's lifestyle and their fondness for prolonged trips abroad. His most successful creation was the beautiful and brilliant female private investigator, Madame Rosika Storey, whose cases appeared in Argosy All-Story Weekly every year from 1922-35. This mystery novel was first published in 1919.