Author: Francis Gerard
Alternate names: Francis Edward Marie Gerard; Francis Edward Gerard; Francis Gérard
Born: 4 February 1905
Died: 1966
Bio: > Full name **Francis Edward Marie Gerard** was born in Chiswick, Middlesex, on 4 February 1905. His surname was sometimes spelled Gérard; he dropped the Marie as an adult. He died in Johannesburg in 1966.

>Most of his works are thrillers, some of them continuations of Edgar Wallace's non-fantasty *Sanders of the Rivers* tales; several of them feature Sir John Meredith, an eminent Occult Detective whose investigations move sometimes into Lost Race territory, examples being *Golden Guilt* (1938), in which a lost colony of Crusaders is found to have survived in Central Asia, and *The Prisoner of the Pyramid* (1948), focusing on Aztec survivals in Central America. *The Black Emperor* (1936) is a Near Future political thriller, in which a Black man is persuaded to attempt to become the emperor of all Africa; more complexly interesting in an science-fiction sense, *Secret Sceptre* (1937) focuses on a secret society of knights, a Pariah Elite sequestered in a remote part of Wales, whose goal is to preserve the Holy Grail and to defend Britain from the Anti-Christ.  [Source:  <a href=https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/gerard_francis/>SF Encyclopedia</a>]