Frank Heller was the pen name of the Swedish writer Gunnar Serner (20 July 1886 - 14 October 1947). He wrote novels and short adventure stories in the genres crime fiction and science fiction. His most well-known tales involve shady business transactions in an international milieu. His best known works concerned the recurring character Philip Collin, who was simultaneously a detective and a thief.
Heller received a PhD in English literature at the age of 23 from the University of Lund. He accumulated a lot of debt which he attempted to cover with forged checks. He was forced to flee Sweden in 1912 due to this role in bank fraud. Living abroad, he began writing novels to make a living, producing forty-three novels, short stories and travelogues before he died in 1947 in a bicycle accident. Heller was the uncle of the actor HÃÂ¥kan Serner.
In the early decades of the 20th century, Heller was "one of SwedenâÂÂs most widely read and translated authors," translated most often into German, Finnish, English and Russian. The Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam, for instance, translated his novel The Thousand and Second Night. His plots frequently involved high-stakes financial swindles, international diplomacy, and the glamorous underworld of Monte Carlo (which he knew from personal experience).
Heller was a literary sensation in the 1920s because his sophisticated, lighthearted thrillers perfectly captured the escapist spirit of the "Roaring Twenties". His inticately plotted stories had a witty, intellectual edge that other pulp thrillers mostly lacked. Heller's subsequent neglect was largely due to a massive shift in cultural tastes after the 1929 stock market crash, which made his "champagne-and-casino" style feel out of touch with the grim realities of the Great Depression and World War II.
In 1981, the Swedish newspaper Kvällsposten founded the awarded to an author who produced a significant work in the spirit of Frank Heller that reflects his excitement, humor and sense of language.