jimmiedale_0804_librivox Frank L. Packard audio librivoxaudio audio_bookspoetry opensource_audio <a href="http://librivox.org/" rel="nofollow">Librivox</a> recording of <a href="http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-jimmie-dale-by-frank-l-packard/" rel="nofollow">The Adventures of Jimmie Dale</a> by Frank L. Packard. Read by Maire Rhode, Lars Rolander, Roger Melin, Julia Albath, Wyatt, webround, & Jacob Cherry. Frank Lucius Packard (February 2, 1877 – February 17, 1942) was a Canadian novelist born in Montreal, Quebec. He worked as a civil engineer on the Canadian Pacific Railway. He later wrote a series of mystery novels, the most famous of which featured a character called Jimmie Dale. Jimmie Dale is a wealthy playboy by day, with a Harvard education and membership to New York City’s ultra-exclusive private club St. James. But at night he puts on a costume and becomes The Grey Seal, who enters businesses or homes and cracks safes, always leaving a diamond shaped, grey paper "seal" behind to mark his conquest, but never taking anything. He was just doing it for "the sheer deviltry of it" at first, but when a woman catches him, she blackmails him to war on certain crime organizations. Jimmie Dale/The Grey Seal is often credited with greatly influencing and popularizing later pulp and comic book heroes. The foppish playboy-by-day-crimefighter-by-night routine had a precursor in The Scarlet Pimpernel, but it was Jimmie Dale that brought the idea into a contemporary setting and added the idea of a costume and mask for his secret identity, serving as a possible influence for characters like Zorro and The Shadow. He also established the concept of a hero's secret hideout or lair, The Sanctuary, a precersor of the Batcave or the Fortress of Solitude. (Summary by Wikipedia and Maire Rhode) For more free audiobooks, or to become a volunteer reader, please visit </a><a href="http://librivox.org/" rel="nofollow">librivox.org</a>. 2008-04-19 2008 librivox; audiobooks; mystery; crimefighter; The Grey Seal http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ 2008-04-19 23:14:47 info@librivox.org librivoxbooks librivoxbooks 2008-04-19 23:44:21 2008-04-19 23:44:53 LibriVox Librivox recording of a public-domain text 2008-04-19 23:45:22 librivoxbooks