CREASEY, John

(1908-1973)

   UK author, publisher and literary agent who began writing for the BOYS' PAPERS in 1926, turning to adult thrillers in 1932. He wrote 564 books under (it is widely reported) 28 pseudonyms, but it is doubtful if all were exclusively by him (Michael MOORCOCK was at one time approached to do writing for JC). Like George GRIFFITH with his future- WAR novels, JC exploited contemporary fears of organized crime and of terrorist and revolutionary activities, often including sf elements as an additional horror-for example, his first novel, Seven Times Seven (1932; rev 1970), depicts a criminal gang equipped with "freezing gas". In later works, beginning with Dangerous Quest (1943; rev 1965), a futuristic novel about an underground Gestapo group in liberated Yugoslavia, and continuing in his Dr Palfrey series (see listing below), sf themes came to the fore. Midget aircraft piloted by zombie-like children attack the world's cities in The Children of Hate (1952; rev vt The Children of Despair 1958 UK; vt The Killers of Innocence 1971 US). Human-induced world DISASTER was imminent in The Flood (1955) and others, while an alien INVASION was defeated in The Unbegotten (1971). All were sensational in nature, contributing nothing to the genre, and were influential only on the cheap-thriller market.

   JE

   Other works include: The Death Miser (1932; rev 1965); Men, Maids and Murder (1933; rev 1972); The Mark of the Crescent (1935; rev 1967); Death Round the Corner (1935); The Mystery Plane (1936); Thunder in Europe (1936; rev 1968); The Air Marauders (1937); Carriers of Death (1937; rev 1968); Days of Danger (1937; rev 1968); The S.O.S. Flight (1937); Death Stands By (1938; rev 1966); The Fighting Fliers (1938); Menace! (1938; rev 1971); Panic! (1939; rev 1969); Death by Night (1940); The Island of Peril (1940; rev 1968); The Peril Ahead (1940; rev 1964); Death in Flames (1943; rev 1973 as by Gordon Ashe); Dark Peril (1944; rev 1958); The League of Dark Men (1947; rev 1965); Department of Death (1951); Four of the Best (coll 1955); The Black Spiders (1957); A Shadow of Death (1968); A Blast of Trumpets (1975). Dr Palfrey stories: Traitors' Doom (1942), The Valley of Fear (1943; vt The Perilous Country 1949), The Legion of the Lost (1943), The Hounds of Vengeance (1945; rev 1967), Death in the Rising Sun (1945), Shadow of Doom (1946), The House of the Bears (1946; rev 1962), Dark Harvest (1947; rev 1962), Sons of Satan (1948; rev 1970), The Wings of Peace (1948; rev 1964), The Dawn of Darkness (1949), The League of Light (1949; rev 1963), The Man who Shook the World (1950; rev 1958), The Prophet of Fire (1951), The Touch of Death (1954), The Mists of Fear (1955), The Plague of Silence (1958), The Drought (1959; vt Dry Spell 1967 UK), The Terror (1962; rev 1970), The Depths (1963), The Sleep (1964), The Inferno (1965), The Famine (1967), The Blight (1968), The Oasis (1969), The Smog (1970), The Insulators (1972), The Voiceless Ones (1973), The Thunder-Maker (1976) and The Whirlwind (1979).

   JE

   See also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.