John Creasey MBE (1908–1973) was an English author of crime, romance, and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred books using some twenty-eight different pseudonyms. Of his many series characters, the Toff, the sobriquet of the Honorable Richard Rollison, endured the longest, figuring in 59 volumes according to Fantastic Fiction, from 1938 to 1978, the final title completed by William Vivian Butler. The character first appeared in 1933 in the weekly magazine The Thriller.
The Toff resembles Simon Templar, better known as the Saint, who preceded the Toff by about 5 years. Both move in exclusive social circles, both fight crime sometimes using unorthodox methods, and both leave calling cards with a caricature as their signatures. In the Toff’s fourth outing Here Comes the Toff (John Long, 1940; Walker, 1967, revised edition) Rollison is out for the evening when he sees an adversary from his past. Irma Cardew, bejeweled and exquisitely gowned, is with an elderly gentleman who, the Toff feels certain, is Cardew’s latest intended victim. Since Cardew stops at nothing to pluck whatever pigeon she has chosen, the Toff decides he needs to intervene before the gentleman loses more than his bank accounts.
A classic adventure of the times, briskly related, a thriller rather than a mystery, it employs the conventions of a master criminal and a femme fatale, a naïve and wealthy target who doesn’t think twice about launching a serious relationship with a total stranger, and a murder for hire organization.
Creasey reworked some of his earlier books in the late 1960s. This title was revised and reissued, as was The Mark of the Crescent (Melrose, 1935) in his Z Department series. No further details about the extent of the revision in either book are provided and I haven’t been able to find a full list of those books that were updated or the reason for it. I have the revision in hand, the original does not seem to be available even on second-hand sites. A comparison of the two would be informative. (I have to wonder how many more books Creasey might have written if he had not stopped to revise his earlier works.)
A quick fun read for students of 1930s crime fiction.