Franklin Long Gregory was born in 1905. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Iowa and began working for The Philadelphia Record in 1936. Around this time, Gregory published the first of his two novels, The Cipher of Death (1934), which would later be followed by The White Wolf (1941). In 1947, Gregory joined the staff of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., where he worked for 25 years, including 20 years as the chief of the Trenton bureau, where he wrote a weekly column.
