John Creasey's The Toff Goes To Market

To call John Creasey (1908-1973) a writing phenomenon would be an understatement of epic proportions. No-one seems to be sure exactly how many books he wrote but most sources estimate the total at over six hundred. Not six hundred short stories - six hundred novels. In 1937 alone he had an astonishing twenty-nine books published.

Not surprisingly given the scale of his output he adopted a number of pseudonyms. Twenty-eight in fact.

His reputation rested mainly on his thrillers but he also wrote mysteries, westerns, adventure stories and even romances.

The Toff was one of the best-known of his many series characters, featuring in no less than fifty-nine books. The Toff Goes To Market, published in 1942, was the eighth book of the Toff series.

The Toff is actually The Honourable Richard Rollison and he’s fairly typical of the gentleman amateur crime-fighters who figure so prominently in the thrillers of the 20s and 30s. He’s more polished than Bulldog Drummond and less flamboyant than The Saint but he’s clearly very much in the same mould. Unlike The Saint Rollison has always stayed on the right side of the law but he has an intimate acquaintance with the underworld and with the slums of the East End where he has gained acceptance through his reputation for fair play. 

Like Bulldog Drummond and Simon Templar The Toff works outside the law. He respects the police and is willing both to help them and to accept help from them but he insists on retaining his freedom of action. And like Simon Templar he is prepared to ignore legal niceties in order to see justice done.

This type of character is of course deeply unfashionable today and tends to be misunderstood by modern readers. There are those who insist on seeing characters like Bulldog Drummond as a  species of proto-fascist, a completely erroneous judgment that betrays a total lack of understanding of both fascism and of the characters of these fictional heroes. A dyed-in-the-wool conservative like Bulldog Drummond would have no more patience with fascism than with any of the other fashionable isms of the 20th century. These types of heroes are in fact politically rather ambiguous. They are always intensely patriotic and instinctive supporters of traditional institutions but on the other hand the very fact that they are kept busy implies that the established system of law enforcement is not only often inadequate but does not always deliver justice. The Toff, like Drummond and Templar, will bend or even break the law in order to see justice done.

The Toff has a sidekick, in the person of his gentleman’s gentleman Jolly. Jolly is essentially Jeeves, if Jeeves had decided to take up crime-fighting. Jolly is indispensable. He rarely needs to be given instructions. He already knows what needs to be done and he has already done it before Rollison has time to tell him. Jolly is certainly a servant but in common with all the gentleman detectives and thriller heroes of that era Rollison treats his servant with unfailing respect, in fact at times almost with the kind of awe with which Bertie Wooster regards Jeeves. And Jolly can certainly handle himself when it comes to dealing with villains.

The Toff Goes To Market was written in 1942 so it has a wartime background. The Toff takes leave from his regiment (being a gentleman of the upper class it goes without saying that he immediately joined the army when the war broke out) to tackle a black market racket. The racket turns out to be on the grand scale, much bigger and more sinister than either Rollison or the police suspected. In fact it’s such a large-scale operation that it has the potential to cause serious damage to the war effort.

These racketeers aren’t just offering goods for sale on the black market, they are using strong-arm tactics to force shop-keepers and publicans to sell their illegal goods. And they are prepared to go further than mere intimidation - they are quite willing to resort to murder.

This is a thriller rather than a mystery so it follows the usual thriller convention whereby both the hero and the reader know who the chief bad guy is right from the start.  What we don’t know is how The Toff is going to bring such a ruthless and powerful criminal to justice. The Toff also doesn’t know the identities of everyone involved in the racket so he can’t be sure whom he can trust.

Of course there’s an attractive young woman mixed up in the events, Rollison being a man who is by no mean indifferent to the charms of attractive young women.

The novel also follows the established convention for thrillers of that period in being concerned with crime, but with crime that may have implications for the safety of the realm. This is crime, but with at least a hint of the possibility of international intrigue and diabolical plots that threaten civilisation itself.

Given the incredible speed with which Creasey wrote (he once claimed to have two written novels in a single week while still having time to play in a cricket match) you would expect the results to be somewhat slap-dash. In fact this isn’t really the case. There’s a decent plot with some clever twists and it all hangs together remarkably well. Creasey’s style might not be over-literary but overall it’s a surprisingly well-constructed thriller.

And it’s certainly entertaining. I wouldn’t rate this particular book quite as highly as the best of the Bulldog Drummond books or the best of Leslie Chateris’s Saint stories but it’s a very competent thriller. Recommended.

Introducing the Toff

Englishman John Creasey (1908-1973) may well be the most prolific author who has ever lived. He had at least 562 novels published during his lifetime and most authorities believe the actual total was over the six hundred mark. Creasey wrote under his own name and under no less than twenty-eight pseudonyms. The Toff was one of his most enduring series characters, featuring in fifty-nine books.

The Toff made his first appearance in print in a story called The Black Circle written for Thriller magazine. The story was later enlarged to novel length as Introducing the Toff, published in 1938.

The Toff is a variation on the gentleman desperado amateur crime-fighter thriller hero made popular by characters like the Saint, Blackshirt and Bulldog Drummond. Like these other heroes the Toff often operates outside the law whilst always remaining on the side of justice. The Toff is slightly unusual however in being an actual aristocrat, something that sharply differentiates him from the Saint. The Toff is actually the Honourable Richard Rollison.

Like Bulldog Drummond and the early version of the Saint the Toff has a number of associates who assist him in the course of his crime-fighting activities, although the only one who makes an appearance in this first novel is his manservant Jolly. Jolly will later become a fully fledged sidekick, and a very competent one, but at this stage he still remains very much in the background.

In Introducing the Toff Creasey tells us that at the time Richard Rollison left Cambridge University he had a fortune of half a million pounds and a very decided taste for adventure, a taste he indulged in the disreputable quarters of various cities in various continents. Having returned to England he has become the scourge of the London underworld and something of a legend in the East End. He is feared for his ruthlessness and efficiency but he has also started to acquire a different sort of legend, as a man who always plays fair and is prepared to stand by any man who offers him help in his implacable war on crime.

The Toff lacks the larger-than-life quality of a Bulldog Drummond and the mischievous wit of a Simon Templar.  At first sight he does not appear to be a very formidable opponent, being slight in build and somewhat unassuming by nature (at least in comparison with Bulldog Drummond and the Saint). This is perhaps one of the reasons he has become so feared - criminals who get on the wrong side of him quickly discover that he is far more dangerous than he looks. There is something uncanny about a slightly built rather quietly spoken gentleman-about-town who is a crack shot and is equally deadly with a knife or in unarmed combat.

Like the Saint the Toff has a distinctive calling card with a drawing of a top hat, a monocle and a cane in place of the Saint’s famous stick figure.

This first Toff novel opens with an encounter with a mysterious gunman on a lonely road, an encounter which almost brings the Toff’s career to an abrupt end. He has decidedly the worst of the encounter but he is not overly bothered by this. He sets about tracking down the gunman with his usual quiet determination.

Rollison has in fact stumbled upon an international drug-smuggling ring, and a number of very dangerous enemies including a sinister Egyptian and a trigger-happy Chicago hoodlum. There is of course a heroine in distress as well, although the Toff has to admit to himself, somewhat reluctantly, that she may not be as innocent as she appears.

The Toff is more inclined than most thriller heroes of his era to work with the police, or at least to co-operate with them. 

While we have no doubt that the Toff will eventually triumph he gives us some anxious moments along the way, especially when he manages to get himself blown up. The Toff is quite happy to admit that he is capable of making mistakes, a quality that makes him a rather endearing hero. He lacks the sublime self-confidence of the Saint but he also lacks the Saint’s arrogance. The Toff’s great strength is his quiet doggedness. 

The most extraordinary thing about Creasey is that despite the truly incredible pace at which he wrote (he once claimed to have written two novels in a week) there’s nothing slapdash about his writing. He was an unbelievably fast but also highly disciplined writer. He was also able to create complex and interesting heroes. 

There’s as much action as you could wish for in a thriller. The Toff of this first novel is not yet a fully developed character but he’s already pretty interesting. It seems that most of the great British thriller series of that era really need to be read in sequence. Like the Saint the Toff evolves somewhat in subsequent books.

On the whole a highly enjoyable read. Definitely recommended.