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Born William Hulbert Footner in Hamilton, Ontario, and traveled to New York in 1898. In the United States, he attempted an acting career, which he eventually gave up on. His first published works were travelogues of canoe trips on the Hudson River, as well as in the Northwest Territory along the Peace River, Hay River and Fraser River. He also wrote a series of northwest adventures during the period 1911 through 1920, including The Sealed Valley (1914) and The Fur Bringers (1920).

About 1920, Footner began to write detective fiction, his first series detective character being Madame Rosika Storey. Footner's other series detective is Amos Lee Mappin, a successful, middle aged mystery writer whose crimes tend to occur in New York's cafe society. Mappin is unusual in that his "Watson" (at least in some of his tales) is a young woman, his secretary Fanny Parran. She is one of the few female "Watsons" in fiction, an example of how unusually female-oriented Footner's fiction was.

Non-fiction

• Two for the Trail - Doubleday & Co, New York, 1911
• New Rivers of the North - Outing Publishing Company; New York; 1912
• Rivers of the Eastern Shore - Farrar & Rinehart; New York, 1944 (Part of the Rivers of America Series)

Fiction

• The Sealed Valley - Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1914
• The Fur Bringers - James A McCann Co, New York, 1920
• The Fugitive Sleuth
• Thieves' Wit
• The Substitute Millionaire
• The Owl Taxi
• The Deaves Affair - George H Doran; New York; 1922
• Ramshackle House
• Officer!
• The Chase of the "Linda Belle"
• The Under Dogs - George H. Doran Co, New York, 1925
• Madame Storey
• Cap'n Sue
• The Velvet Hand
• Queen of Clubs
• The Doctor Who Held Hands
• A Self-Made Thief
• Anybody's Pearls
• Trial By Water
• The Viper
• The Folded Paper Mystery
• Easy to Kill
• The Casual Murderer
• Dead Man's Hat
• The Ring of Eyes
• The Almost Perfect Murder
• Murder Runs in the Family
• Dangerous Cargo
• The New Made Grave
• Murder of a Bad Man
• Scarred Jungle
• The Kidnapping of Madame Storey
• The Island of Fear
• The Dark Ships
• Tortuous Trails
• Murder in the Sun
• Death of a Celebrity
• The Nation's Missing Guest
• The Murder That Had Everything
• Sinfully Rich
• Murderer's Vanity
• Who Killed the Husband
• The House with the Blue Door
• Death of a Saboteur
• Unneutral Murder
• Orchids to Murder