If this has been a mystery to you, consider it solved. Although Leslie McFarlane didn't create The Hardy Boys, he is responsible for writing the first 20 or so books in the series under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon. Not only did McFarlane write them, he wrote them while living in Canada, notably in Haileybury, Ontario, where he had grown up, and later in Montreal.

In the spring of 1926, McFarlane (who is the father of author and former Canadian hockey broadcaster Brian McFarlane), had worked for newspapers in Canada and the U.S. and saw an ad for an "Experienced Fiction Writer" being sought by The Stratemeyer Syndicate of New Jersey. The syndicate, owned by Edward Stratemeyer, was responsible for a series of fictional heroes such as Dave Fearless. McFarlane wrote a couple of Dave Fearless books, under the pseudonym Roy Rockwood, but didn't enjoy them much. The syndicate would send him the outline of the book and the plot and he had to fill in the rest. For that he received $100 and no royalties.

Stratemeyer then asked him to begin work on a new series he'd conceived called The Hardy Boys. McFarlane's pay was hiked to $125 (it went up slightly in later years but again he received no royalties) and he would be writing from outlines and plots provided by the syndicate. Franklin W. Dixon was born, and McFarlane started with The Tower Treasure.

The books, which feature brothers Joe and Frank Hardy, son of the famous detective Fenton Hardy, take place in the fictional town of Bayport. By the time McFarlane began writing them he had returned to northern Ontario and began hammering at the typewriter. He had moved back to Haileybury by the time he started on the third book in the series, The Secret of the Old Mill.

In his biography, The Ghost of the Hardy Boys, McFarlane says he looked upon the books as a job and didn't pay much attention to them once they were released. He faithfully followed the outlines, but his added nuances to the characters are probably one reason why the books were so popular.

McFarlane also wrote a couple of volumes of The Dana Girls, under the pen name of Carolyn Keene ("author" of the Nancy Drew mysteries). He continued writing Hardy Boys books through the 30s and 40s, completing his last one, the Phantom Freighter, while in Nova Scotia directing a film. McFarlane didn't just write Hardy Boy books; he also made a name for himself writing short stories, radio plays, novels, and film scripts. A documentary he wrote the script for, Herring Hunt, was nominated for an Academy Award.

He claimed it wasn't until the 1940s that he found out the Hardy Boys were apparently the best-selling boys books in the world. The books have been ghost written by others since then, and McFarlane's original stories have since been rewritten and updated. He died in 1977.