Talk:John Creasey

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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.