A private party

William (Thomas) Ard was an American writer of detective novels and westerns. While he went by many names, he is essentially a man of two faces. Ard was the creator of hard-hitting detective Timothy Dane of New York and an even harder living and loving detective, Lou Largo, of Florida. Under the pseudonym of Jonas Ward, Ard gave birth to the friendly and deadly western drifter Tom Buchanan. When Ard died, so did Dane. Largo lived on in a couple more books written by a ghost writers, one of whom who went on to become very famous in his own right.