FRANK USHER

According to Wikipedia: "Charles Franklin, the pen-name of Frank Hugh Usher, (22 October 1909 - 1976) born in Leicester, Leicestershire, a British author of mystery novels and spy novels. He also wrote under the pen-names Frank Usher, and Frank Lester.

Little interested in the whodunit, still in vogue in England in the immediate post-war period, he followed in the footsteps of Peter Cheyney and David Hume and showed a clear penchant for Noir fiction and, less surprisingly, from the 1960s, for spy novels.

Under the pseudonym Charles Franklin, he published his first novel, Exit Without Permit, in 1946, with his most famous recurring hero, Grant Garfield, a young and intrepid lawyer, sometimes assisted in his twelve investigations, by his charming secretary Barbara Wenthworth. After abandoning Garfield, he wrote three novels for Inspector Jim Burgess, and three others for the spy Maxine Dangerfield, a kind of female James Bond. He also published under Charles Franklin's name historical works dealing with famous legal or criminal cases.

Under his birth name, he was the author of the adventures of Daye Smith, a portrait painter and amateur sleuth.[1] He also used this name for his fantasy short stories and a short series of spy novels centred on the duo of Amanda Curzon and her sidekick Oscar Sallis."