bookcove.net

Raoul Falconia Whitfield was born in New York City on November 22, 1896, into a family that was socially prominent and financially comfortable. His father, William H. Whitfield, was in the U.S. Civil Service and was moved about at the government's discretion; sometime before 1900, perhaps when Raoul was two or three, William Whitfield moved his family to Manila, where he had been assigned to a position with the Territorial Government.

In 1916, Raoul Whitfield became ill and was sent to New York for treatment. After Whitfield's health improved, he drifted to California and began a short-lived career as a bit-part actor in the silent movies; he was handsome, muscular, a six-footer, who looked and dressed like a "Dapper Dan". When World War I began, Whitfield enlisted in the Army and was initially assigned to the ambulance corps; desiring action, he sought and won a commission as a pilot and saw duty on the German front as a combat pilot.

After the Armistice he spurned his steel business-based family's desires, married his first wife Prudence and landed a job with the Pittsburgh Post as a reporter. Whitfield married Prudence Van Tine on April 28, 1923. It is believed that he started to write stories during this time in Pittsburgh because he had at least forty pulp stories, including tales of air adventures, published from 1924 until he began selling to Black Mask magazine in 1926.

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). In 1930, he began writing a series of stories featuring Filipino detective Jo Gar; two-dozen Gar stories would appear in Black Mask between 1930 and 1933, published under the Ramon Decolta pseudonym. Whitfield died of tuberculosis in a military hospital in January 1945.