Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. (January 22, 1893 – May 24, 1952) was an American journalist, playwright, editor and writer.

Oursler was born and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a poor city transit worker.

He also wrote detective stories and magazine articles under the pseudonym Anthony Abbot, as well as several plays, the most famous of which was the gimmick-filled The Spider (1928), co-written with Lowell Brentano and later filmed twice, in 1931 and 1945.

Under the name Anthony Abbott, Oursler wrote several mysteries featuring the detective Thatcher Colt.

Unlike most fictional detectives of the period (usually inspectors or amateur sleuths), Colt belongs to the higher echelons of law enforcement, being the commissioner of the New York Police Department.

Similarly to S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance stories, Oursler featured his nom-de-plume Anthony Abbott as a character in the books, serving as Colt's sidekick and in the manner of Dr. Watson, the first-person narrator of the stories.

[17] In 1925, Oursler married Grace Perkins, who had been raised Catholic but lapsed in her teens.

[18] In 1935, the Oursler family toured the Middle East and spent a week in the Holy Land.

On the journey home, Oursler started writing a book titled A Skeptic in the Holy Land.

However, perceiving the growing threat of Nazism and Communism, he found himself increasingly drawn to Christian ethics.

[22] Oursler also wrote, as Abbot, the Reader's Digest article that was made into the movie Boomerang!

[citation needed] Oursler died in New York City in 1952, while halfway through writing his autobiography.