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Prather was born in Santa Ana, California and spent a year at Riverside Junior College (now Riverside Community College). He served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II, from 1942 through the end of the war, in 1945. That year he married Tina Hager and began working as a civilian chief clerk of surplus property at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. He left that job to become a full-time writer in 1949. The first Shell Scott mystery, Case of the Vanishing Beauty, was published in 1950. It would be the start of a long series that numbered more than three dozen titles featuring the Shell Scott character.