Charles Leslie McFarlane (October 25, 1902 – September 6, 1977)[1] was a Canadian journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker, who is most famous for ghostwriting many of the early books in the very successful Hardy Boys series, using the pseudonym Franklin W.
As a result, he freelanced in 1926 and 1927 as one of the authors using the pseudonym Roy Rockwood to write seven of the Dave Fearless serialized mystery novels.
"[2] His daughter, Norah McFarlane Perez, said in an interview that "They'd give him an outline, but to make it palatable, he'd come up with different characters and add colour and use large words, and inject his wonderful sense of humour.
Although there are claims that his last Hardy Boys book, The Phantom Freighter, was actually written by his wife Amy,[5] his biographer Marilyn Greenwald concluded that this was unlikely.
[6] In his 1976 autobiography Ghost of the Hardy Boys, McFarlane says that The Phantom Freighter "was written in 1946 in motel rooms at night on a location in Nova Scotia when I was directing a film".
The Leslie McFarlane Public School in Whitby, Ontario, was named in his honour until it was demolished in early 2010 when it was deemed more expensive to repair than it would be to build a new structure.
[6] In 2006, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, acquired Leslie McFarlane's diaries, correspondence, and early material, along with first editions of The Secret of the Caves and The Tower Treasure.