Ghost of the Hardy Boys
The Writer Behind the World's Most Famous Boy Detectives

I never read any Hardy Boys books as a kid and, in fact, read my first one when I was about 40 years old. But I'm always fascinated to discover how authors came to write whatever it is that they wrote, especially when it's an iconic series and the author is relatively unknown. Such is the case with......more

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir by the ghostwriter of many of the Hardy Boys books, Leslie McFarlane. Written in the 1970’s, it’s a look at both his own interesting life in Canada, and a look behind the scenes of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the creators of many children’s series. McFarlane sounds li......more

The ghostwriter who hooked millions of boys on reading (early 1900s–1975; Northern Ontario, Canada and Springfield, Massachusetts): How good a sleuth are you? Did you detect the picture hanging on the wall, spying through the window of the nostalgic cover art of the Ghost of the Hardy Boys, is the co......more

Godine Press has just re-issued this 1976 memoir by Leslie McFarlane. He was the author of 21 Hardy Boys books from 1927 to 1947. He was the ghost writer. They were published under the name "Franklin W. Dixon". The books were owned by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. They would send him a plot outline and......more

If you grew up reading the Hardy Boys adventures like I did, you will probably be interested in this autobiography. It’s about the man who was the author behind the first fifteen Hardy Boys novels. You may already know that Franklin W. Dixon was a corporate penname, one of sixty-odd such names devel......more