Fiction maestro John Creasey (1908 – 1973) was and remains an enigma. He was one of the biggest selling and most prolific crime writers of the 20th century. Creasey wrote over 620 novels in both his own name and through over 25 different pseudonyms including; Norman Deane, Michael Halliday, Jeremy York, Gordon Ashe, JJ Maric and Anthony Morton.
Creasey’s popularity is as staggering as his output with book sales approaching 100 million copies across 29 languages in over 100 countries. At the peak of his commercial success Creasey was selling 4 million books a year in the UK and USA alone. Protagonists such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Baron and The Toff are lynchpins of British post war crime fiction, and several Creasey works were adapted for TV and film.