Sydney born Leonard Frank Meares published around 750 novels, mostly westerns. His best-known works feature Texas trouble-shooters Larry and Stretch. Before starting to write, Meares served in the Royal Australian Air Force, worked in the Department of Immigration and sold shoes. In the mid-1950s he bought a typewriter to write radio and film scripts. Inspired by the success of local paperback westerns, he wrote Trouble Town, which was published by the Cleveland Publishing Company in 1955. Although Meares used the pseudonym Marshall Grover, Cleveland decided to issue it under the name Johnny Nelson. Meares continued to write for Cleveland under various names including Ward Brennan, Glenn Murrell, Shad Denver and Brett Waring (a pseudonym more correctly associated with Keith Hetherington).
His tenth yarn, Drift! (1956), introduced Larry Valentine and Stretch Emerson. In 1960, he created a brief but memorable series of westerns set in and around the town of Bleak Creek. Four years later came The Night McLennan Died, the first of more than 70 westerns (sometimes called oaters) to feature cavalryman-turned-manhunter Big Jim Rand. In mid-1966, Meares left Cleveland to write exclusively for the Horwitz Group. Horwitz soon sold more than 30 novels to Bantam Books for publication in the United States, where for legal reasons 'Marshall Grover' became 'Marshall McCoy', 'Larry and Stretch' became 'Larry and Streak' and 'Big Jim Rand' became 'Nevada Jim Gage'.
Len began his association with Robert Hale Ltd. in 1981, with Jo Jo and the Private Eye the first of five Marty Moon detective novels published under the name Lester Malloy. Hale also issued his offbeat romance The Future and Philomena as Val Sterling in 1982. He even scored with two stand-alone crime novels, The Battle of Jericho Street (1984) as Frank Everton, and Dead Man Smiling (1986), published under his own name. His first Black Horse Western was, fittingly enough, a Larry and Stretch yarn entitled Rescue a Tall Texan (1989). Meares also created husband-and-wife detectives Rick and Hattie Braddock (first appearance Colorado Runaround, 1991).
Source: http://www.geocities.com/chapkeith/bhe2/index.htm...I (Sighted 2006)
