Jim Lawrence was born in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis, then earned a degree in education from Wayne University in Detroit. He went on to earn a degree in mechanical engineering from the Detroit Institute of Technology. In 1939 he married. In 1940 he began teaching art at Detroit public schools, supplementing his income with jobs as a factory hand, office clerk, and safety engineer. In 1941 he was hired as a writer by the Jam Handy Organization, a producer of short educational and commercial movies, where he wrote scripts for naval and military training films. He began writing freelance for children's magazines as well, and in 1944 he decided to become a freelance writer full-time. In 1949 he was hired to write scripts for the radio show Challenge of the Yukon. He went on to write for other radio shows such as The Green Hornet, Sky King, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and The Silver Eagle.
From the mid-1950s to 1967 he worked for the Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate, producing several of the Hardy Boys books under the house pseudonym "Franklin W. Dixon," some of the Nancy Drew and Bobbsey Twins books using the pseudonyms "Carolyn Keene" and "Sherry Lemmon", and 23 of the 33 Tom Swift, Jr. books under the house pseudonym "Victor Appleton II."
From 1967 to 1969 he also contributed to the Christopher Cool series under the shared pseudonym "Jack Lancer." He also produced fiction under his own name, including *Binky Brothers, Detectives* (1968) and *Binky Brothers and the Fearless Four* (1971), both in collaboration with Leonard P. Kessler. In the late 1970s, he wrote the *Man From Planet-X* series under the pseudonym "Hunter Adams." In the 1980s, he wrote for Infocom, a software company that produced interactive fiction. He co-wrote two games for them, Seastalker (1984) and Moonmist (1986).
