Russell, an unlikely expert on Creasey’s extraordinary output, estimates that Creasey wrote almost 800 books. Russell’s collection of books by Creasey adds up to more than 1000, including several editions of the one title, or several editions of the one title in different languages.

Creasey’s eventful life included founding his own political party, the All Party Alliance, for which he fought five parliamentary elections. Aside from writing and politics, he took an 18-month trip around the world in his Rolls-Royce, which he recorded on film. Creasey was married four times, smoked up to 100 cigarettes a day, founded the British Crime Writers Association, and pioneered the philosophy he described as selfism…, as detailed in his book Good, God and Man.

After Christmas 1993, Russell and a bunch of artist friends hired a house on Scotland’s Isle of Skye to see in the New Year. In the house was a copy of a book called The Toff on Ice by John Creasey. Russell liked the cover. He began reading. Over the next few days, he was drawn in not so much by the power of the literature, but by its familiarity. Russell always felt he knew where the book was taking him. He believed that anyone who had been educated in a British school would have done so.

Russell souvenired the book, which had a list of 50 Creasey titles inside the jacket. During a subsequent weekend, he chanced across a Creasey title in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh. This book also had a list of 50 Creasey titles inside the jacket. Russell checked the titles listed in both books and found that only two were the same. That meant that one writer had 98 books. Russell wondered whether he was on to more of a “cultural inheritance” than he first thought.


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