R. T. M. SCOTT

According to Wikipedia: "Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott, (August 14, 1882 - February 5, 1966) was a Canadian author of detective and espionage novels. He signed his works as R.T.M. Scott.

Scott was born in Woodstock, Ontario, in 1882, the son of Alfred Maitland Scott and Elizabeth Bolby Willson. In 1901, he began studies at the Royal Military College in Kingston. He then worked as an engineer in India, Malaysia and from 1908 to 1911 in Ceylon. During the First World War, he served with the rank of captain in a Canadian Expeditionary Force in Belgium. Wounded, he was repatriated to Canada where he ended the war by working in the military administration.

After the war, he settled in New York and began a literary career. In 1920 he published What Bluff Dreams Are Made Of, where secret service agent Aurelius Smith first appears. From the second novel of the series, The Black Magician (1925), Smith became a New York criminologist who, like Sherlock Holmes, a character Scott idolized, received clients in his apartment. In 1935, the popular success of the series gave rise to a radio drama whose scripts were for the most part drafted by Scott himself.

In 1933, Scott wrote the first two novels in the pulp magazine series called The Spider. The series was continued by another author, Norvell Page who wrote under the pseudonym Grant Stockbridge. In 1938, Columbia Pictures made a 15-chapter serial entitled The Spider's Web based on the character, followed in 1941 by The Spider Returns. Scott was also interested in paranormal psychic phenomena and published several articles on the subject."