J.S. Fletcher

Joseph Smith Fletcher was a British writer and journalist, born on February 7, 1863, in Halifax, West Yorkshire. He was the son of a clergyman, but was raised by his grandmother on a farm in Darrington, near Pontefract, after his father's death when he was only eight months old.

Fletcher was educated at Silcoates School in Wakefield, and after studying law for a short time, he decided to pursue a career in journalism. His background in law, however, proved to be useful in his future literary career, which spanned approximately 200 books on a wide variety of subjects. These included fiction, non-fiction, histories, historical fiction, and mysteries, making him a versatile and prolific writer.

Fletcher was particularly known as one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Golden Age, a period of particularly high quality in the history of the genre. His expertise in this field was widely recognized and appreciated by his contemporaries and later generations of readers and writers. Despite his success in various genres, Fletcher's contributions to detective fiction remain his most enduring legacy.