FRANCIS GERARD

According to the bio on Science Fiction Encyclopedia: "UK author (whose surname was sometimes spelled Gérard), in South Africa after World War Two; most of his works are thrillers, some of them continuations of Edgar Wallace's nonfantastic Sanders of the Rivers tales; several of them featuring Sir John Meredith, an eminent Occult Detective whose investigations move sometimes into Lost Race territory, examples being Golden Guilt (1938), in which a lost colony of Crusaders is found to have survived in Central Asia, and The Prisoner of the Pyramid (1948), focusing on Aztec survivals in Central America. The Black Emperor (short version 7 November 1936 The Thriller; 1936) is a Near Future political thriller, in which a Black man is persuaded to attempt to become the emperor of all Africa; more complexly interesting in an sf sense, Secret Sceptre (1937) focuses on a secret society of knights, a Pariah Elite sequestered in a remote part of Wales, whose goal is to preserve the Holy Grail and to defend Britain from the Anti-Christ."