Raoul Falconia Whitfield (1896-1945) was born to a well-to-do family in New York and spent much of his childhood in the Philippines where his father was a senior civil servant. Returning to the States due to an illness in 1916 he tried his hand as a movie actor before serving as a pilot during World War I. After the war he worked as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post before moving to Florida and taking up writing full time. During the 20's he wrote for Black Mask where he became friends with another of the writers, Dashiell Hammett. He was a prolific short story writer in this period, with many of the stories featuring aviation themes or Far Eastern locales. His most famous detectives were Ben Jardinn and the Philippine Jo Gar. In the 30's he turned to writing novels, but his output stopped when he married his second wife, Emily Vanderbilt Thayer. He died in 1945 of tuberculosis. In addition to his own name, he had stories published under several pseudonyms including Temple Field and Ramon Delcota.