Talk:John Creasey

Untitled
Well, its good to see my Dad, John Creasey, on Wikipedia but there are a lot of inaccuracies here. For example:

Dad died in the UK not “Tucson, Arizona”. To be precise about the place he died at New Hall, Bodenham, Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK. Yes, “he became an English author of crime thrillers, published 562 books under 28 different pseudonyms, keeping to a consistently high standard of quality throughout”, but this suggests he was only published in the UK and only wrote 562 books. BBC’s h2g2 webpage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A610886 gives a slightly fuller picture, which I edited myself. Here’s just one paragraph from it:

He published over 600 books (no one is sure exactly how many!) following 743 rejection slips, with worldwide sales in November 1971 of over 80 million copies in at least 5000 different editions in 28 different languages. Britain and the United States were his main markets with total sales in each of over two million copies a year with at least half a million elsewhere. There are 11 different series, four of them (Roger West, the Toff, the Baron and Patrick Dawlish) with either 50 titles reached or very close, two series (Dr Palfrey and Department Z) with over 30 titles, and the great Gideon with 21. A further 50-odd titles have been published as written by Michael Halliday.

Most of this paragraph Dad wrote himself in 1971, my numbers update is to take the 562 books to “over 600” because a further 40 were published before (and after) he died in 1973. And in fact no one, even Dad, knew exactly how many books he had published!

In this Wikipedia piece it says “He married Jean and had 2 sons. He later married a further 3 times.” This is nearly right, but in fact he married two more times after marrying my Mum, Jean, who was in fact his second wife. He had one son, Colin by his first wife, three sons not two. No doubt this mistake concerning Tucson, mentioned above, is because his third lived there. And lastly: Yes “In 1967, he founded the All Party Alliance.”  But he founded lots and lots of other organisations during his extraordinary life.

Hope this is helpful.

Richard Creasey -son three.


 * I've added a bit on your father's Roger West BBC series with Patrick Allen. The info is from the BBC radio series The Radio Detectives with Jeffrey Richards that you yourself participated in - here:

List of pseudonyms?
The article mentions that Creasy used 28 pseudonyms - what were they? While it is impractical to list all 600+ titles, it would seem more worthwhile to list a title associated with each of his pen names. 147.70.242.54 (talk) 21:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

...or at least acknowledge each of the different series. The Baron novels were big in their day. 81.158.42.208 (talk) 16:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've added a few of Creasey's pseudonyms to the article but it's only a few.

Source for the use of “Toff”?
Surely there is no basis in the claim that the term “Toff” is "“a courtesy title given to the eldest sons of Viscounts and Barons”"…? It’s just a slang term for anyone rich, often indolent, and sometimes aristocratic; it isn’t a title which is given, it’s just a general term, used by anyone (probably rarely of one’s self). Jock123 (talk) 15:14, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Science fiction
I removed from the introduction the following text: "and science fiction" in "English crime and science fiction writer". Also removed "science fiction" from genre categorization. There is no evidence in this article or the h2g2 article (linked in this article) that he ever wrote science fiction. I added "romance" and "western" to the intro, as he did write those. Zaslav (talk) 07:39, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree, . Many (though not all) of the Dr Palfrey (Z5) and Department Z novels (particularly those written after WW2) are clearly Science Fiction, and a substantial number of his other novels contain science fictional elements: see his entry in the authoritative Science Fiction Encyclopedia for specific details – note that the bibliographical list in that article "Includ[es] known fantastic titles only."
 * I have restored the lede text, and leave it to you to study the SFE evidence, restore the categorization, and add further description to the body text should you wish. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 19:58, 3 June 2021 (UTC)