JOHN CREASEY'S INSPECTOR WEST

(This article reproduced by kind permission of Richard Creasey)

THE CHARACTER of Roger West emerged, quite consciously, out of Grice of the Yard in the Toff books. Creasey, always striving for variety, wanted to create a Scotland Yard detective not restricted by the presence of another central character in the same book. With Inspector West Takes Charge. and several subsequent books, West had an 'amateur' friend, Mark Lessing, to give unofficial help, but soon he was on his own and the West series was truly launched. It became a worldwide success rivalled only by the Gideon series for authentic police procedural studies.

To add a touch of greater humanity, the John Creasey wrote his own sons, Martin and Richard, into the series, so countless readers are familiar with the year-by-year development of the two sons of Roger and Janet West. As the series developed, also, West and some of its regular characters were drawn in much greater depth. The first of Creasey's series (except the early Barons) to be published in the United States, the Roger West stories are now commonly regarded as among the best crime books published.

As all of Creasey's series characters, West has matured and acquired a character particularly his own. One reader, commenting on Look Three Ways at Murder, said: 'If this were a book by an author who has a book published every year or so it would be an out-and-out best-seller.'

It is undoubtedly true that Creasey does suffer to some degree from the prejudice against quick writers among critics and in the trade itself. Perhaps the West series has also suffered a little because the word 'Inspector' had to be dropped from the titles when West was promoted to Chief Superintendent - the youngest ever at the Yard.

Creasey himself said that if he had to be judged by any single book he had written he would like it to be Look Three Ways at Murder. Reading back through title after title, however, one is constantly surprised by the quality of the story-telling. The Lythway Library reprints of the West books were certainly among their most popular. Some early as well as the new titles were published in the USA - by Scribner, while Lancer and Berkley found a vastly expanding market for the paperback reprints.

One of the author's greatest moments of satisfaction came when Murder, London - Australia, the 1965 West, was published in the Soviet Union. Creasey went to Moscow in 1960, had great difficulty in making an appointment with any publishers, finally saw one and left several books. The publisher/editor promised politely to consider them. Each year thereafter Creasey sent him several new books, all of which were courteously acknowledged. Not until 1969 did he make the breakthrough.

'I will admit that I would rather Russians learned about London and the English police through West than, as they have learned about them for so long, through Sherlock Holmes.'