Raoul Whitfield

Raoul Whitfield (November 22, 1896 – January 24, 1945) was an American writer of adventure, aviation, and hardboiled crime fiction. During his writing career, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, Whitfield published over 300 short stories and serials in pulp magazines, as well as nine books, including Green Ice (1930) and Death in a Bowl (1931). For his novels and contributions to the Black Mask, Whitfield is considered one of the original members of the hard-boiled school of American detective fiction and has been referred as "the Black Mask's forgotten man".

By the mid-1930s, the amount of work Whitfield produced dropped substantially as he suffered what the Black Mask editor Joseph Shaw described as a "personal tragedy." Both his second and third wife died by suicide; in his later years, despite coming into money, Whitfield was broke and suffering from tuberculosis. He would die of the disease in 1945.

Raoul F. Whitfield was born in New York City, New York on November 22, 1896. He was the son of William H. Whitfield and Mabelle P. Whitfield (née Whitfield), who were cousins. His parents were also cousins of Louise Whitfield Carnegie, the wife of Andrew Carnegie. Whitfield used the middle name "Fauconnier" in his writing while his official birth certificate uses the Anglicized version "Falconer."

In a self-profile published in pulp magazine Argosy, Whitfield claimed to have been educated at Trinity School and Leigh University. From 1904 to 1912, Whitfield attended Trinity School, leaving after the eighth grade. However, the claim with regards to Leigh University has been disputed by the university's alumni association.

In his adolescence, he accompanied his father to the Philippines, where the older Whitfield was working for the Territorial Government during the American colonial era. While in Asia, Whitfield also travelled to Japan, China, and Hawaii. These experiences would influence his writing, as Whitfield would set several of his stories in the Asia-Pacific region, most notably the two-dozen adventures of Spanish-Filipino "island detective" Jo Gar, published in the Black Mask under the pen name Ramon Decolta. In 1916, Whitfield fell ill and returned to the U.S. for treatment. After recovering, Whitfield spent some time in Hollywood working as a silent-film actor prior to the advent of the star system.

During World War I, he enlisted in the United States Army, first serving in the ambulance service and then in the air service, receiving training at Kelly Field before flying in France during the last months of the war. Whitfield received a commission as a second lieutenant and returned to the U.S. in February 1919. He would later draw on his war experience in writing adventure and aviation tales, including the juveniles Silver Wings (1930) and Danger Zone (1931), which were marketed as based on the author's own experiences in their dust jackets.

After the armistice, Whitfield worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania according to the wishes of his family that he learn the steel business. That did not last long and he soon tried other jobs including working as a bonds salesman, and then as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post. At the time, Whitfield was living in East McKeesport, part of Greater Pittsburgh. He would later use Pittsburgh as the setting for his first novel, Green Ice (1930), where the fictional Post-Dispatch newspaper figures prominently.

Whitfield began submitting short stories to pulp magazines while working as a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post. His first piece of published short fiction was the airplane racing story "Flashing Towers" in a March 1924 issue of Street & Smith's Sport Story Magazine. He was soon publishing stories in pulp magazines such as Sport Story, War Stories, Breezy Stories, Droll Stories, Triple-X Magazine, Air Trails, Boys' Life, Youth's Companion, Telling Tails, and Everybody's Magazine. His output was so prolific that Whitfield began to adopt the pen name Temple Field, which was used alongside his own byline in Fawcett's Battle Stories, as well as the pen name Ramon Decolta, used for his Jo Gar stories in the Black Mask. Whitfield's use of pen names grew from the editorial policy of pulp magazines not to feature more than one story under the same byline in a single issue. Charles F. Danver, a writer at the Pittsburgh Post, said of Whitfield's time at the paper: "Raoul Whitfield, a reporter on the old Post, used to write stories and hang them on hooks on the wall. When he needed money, he'd grab a piece here and a piece there, paste them together, and mail the result to one of the numerous pulp magazines to which he contributed."