By James Aitchison

He was called a “book factory”, writing more than 600 novels using 28 different pseudonyms.  Some critics shunned him, but readers loved him.  They lapped up 80 million copies of his work — in 25 languages!

John Creasey MBE was born 17 September 1908, the seventh of nine children.  His father was an impoverished coach maker.  Creasey battled polio as a child.  It was an unlikely start in life for an author, but Creasey knew from the outset that he wanted to follow his passion: writing.  Leaving school at 14, from 1923 to 1935 he worked as a clerk, a salesman and in various factory jobs.  He was frequently fired for neglecting his work in favour of writing.  His family laughed at his ambition.  He received 743 rejections from publishers.  But once he secured his first break, he didn’t stop.

Selling his first manuscript Seven Times Seven in 1932, Creasey was a full-time author by 1935.

His repertoire was staggering: detective and crime fiction, science fiction, espionage thrillers, romances and westerns. 

Creasey was so determined to make his mark he turned out two books a week — with a break for cricket midweek.  In 1937 alone, 29 of his books were published.  He was the British equivalent of France’s Georges Simenon, whose story is also featured on Literary Yard.  

Creasey wrote so fast that booksellers complained he left little room for other authors in their Crime sections.  Creasey’s solution?  Continue to churn out books — but under pseudonyms.

Creasey not only re-branded himself by using pseudonyms, but he also created eleven ongoing characters who in effect segmented the market.  His characters include The Toff, The Baron, Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard, Inspector Roger West, Doctor Emmanuel Cellini and Doctor Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey.  In this way, Creasey ensured there was always a new title featuring one of your favourite characters!

As he grew older and more established he averaged one book a month —in itself an extraordinary feat for any author.  Creasey once suggested that he could be locked into a glass box and write a whole book whilst inside.

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In 1938, Creasey created one of his most popular characters, The Toff.  (“Toff” is a British slang expression for an aristocrat.)  His first novel, presaging a series, was titled Introducing the Toff.    In Creasey’s series, The Toff was The Honourable Richard Rollison, an amateur sleuth who featured in 80 novels from 1938 to 1978.  Arguably, The Toff paved the way for The Saint by Leslie Charteris.

Like The Toff, The Baron was another sophisticated character: John Mannering, a former jewel thief turned Mayfair antiques dealer.  Creasey began the series naturally enough with Meet the Baron.  Initially he used his pseudonym Anthony Morton for this 62-book series; later the banner would read “by Anthony Morton, now known to be John Creasey”.

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Creasey always had many irons in the fire.  During World War II, he created the character Dr Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey.  Palfrey was a British secret service agent who formed Z5, a secret underground group.  The series ran for 34 books: the first, Traitor’s Doom, was published in 1942, with the last, The Whirlwind, published in 1979.

He wrote westerns under the pseudonyms of Ken Ranger, Tex Riley, William K. Reilly and Jimmy Wilde.  He penned romance novels as Margaret Cooke, M. E. Cooke and Elsie Fecamps.

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Significantly, Creasey pioneered the crime and mystery sub-genre known as “police procedurals”.  Inspector Roger “Handsome” West of Scotland Yard was an instant success and later became a popular BBC radio series from 1967 to 1971.  In all, Creasey wrote 68 Inspector West books.

Another Creasey creation — under his pseudonym J. J. Marric — was Commander George Gideon, also of Scotland Yard.  The 28 Gideon books were remarkable for their accuracy in portraying the life of a senior detective at the Yard.  One of the best was Gideon’s Day, which became a 1958 Columbia Pictures movie starring the great Jack Hawkins as a thoroughly realistic British copper.  In the USA it was known as Gideon of Scotland Yard.  Making a switch from his usual westerns, the film was directed by the famous John Ford.  In 1964, Gideon’s Way was a TV series starring John Gregson.

Many other Creasey books became films and TV series.

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Not surprisingly, Creasey had many different publishers.  In the UK, he had lasting relationships with Hodder & Stoughton and John Long.  In the American market, he signed with both Harper’s and Scribner’s.

In an effort to “give back” to the genre and support author opportunities, in 1953 John Creasey founded the Crime Writers’ Association in the UK.  The CWA awards a First Novel Dagger in his memory to first books by previously unpublished writers.

Meanwhile, across the ditch, the Mystery Writers of America bestowed a prestigious Edgar Award on Creasey in 1962; his Gideon’s Fire was judged Best Novel of the Year.  In 1969, he received the association’s greatest honour, The Grand Master Award.  In 1966 he served one term as MWA’s president, one of only three non-American authors to share that honour.

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Somehow, in his busy life, Creasey also pursued political ambitions.  Standing first as a Liberal Party member and later as an Independent, he never won an election despite the popularity of his books.

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John Creasey died in 1973.  In March 2007 his family sold all his copyrights to Fleming Literary Management.

Without doubt, Creasey remains an enigma and a maestro.  At his peak he was selling four million books a year in the UK and USA alone.  One calculation estimates that he wrote an average of a book a week across his working life. 

Asked in 1973 why he continued to write six thousand words a day despite his wealth and success, Creasey pointed to his early years of rejection.  His will to succeed saw him feverishly punching out rough drafts in as little as seven days, then putting them aside, sometimes for months, for later critical review.  While the first draft was “cooling”, he would begin drafting another and another and another.  Sometimes, according to Creasey, he had upwards of 15 books in progress.

His protagonists were invariably male; however, he crafted resilient characters that were “reflective and prone to self-examination”.  Even his criminals were given opportunities to “explore their better natures”. Some critics argued that his characters lacked depth.  Readers disagreed.  Certainly, George Gideon was a character drawn with great sensitivity.

And incredibly, not only was he constantly writing new books but was also revising his earlier books published before 1953, explaining: “Everything of mine should be as good as I can possibly make it at the time of publication”. 

Creasey was the penultimate prolific perfectionist!