h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

John Creasey "never told a story through the eyes of an American" according to the article here, "John Creasey Ten Authors in One".

Please can the author, or editor, explain the 1957 Halliday book "Runaway", which after the first chapter is told almost exclusively from the point of view of the lead character Bob Curran, an American?

For that matter, what about Creasey's Westerns under three pen-names? These had POV characters who were Americans, surely?

Regards,

Keith Chapman

Hello Keith

Well first and foremost thank you for reading this so closely. These pages were put together as the start of a digital archive and indeed I use the site regularly to remind myself and show others of what Dad did, but it is hugely more exciting to know that others are reading it too, and reading it so thoroughly.

In fact the author of this was Dad himself. Like most authors, he was often asked by publishers to write about his work. This he did in the third person. As Dad died over thirty years ago, we can’t go to the source.

We do know that he would have been very aware, when writing this in the late 1960s, that he had written nearly thirty westerns.

I’ve always taken it to mean that as a writer he was at ease writing through the eyes of a character who might be a criminal or policemen, young or old, rich or poor etc, but that he felt uncomfortable presuming to write as if he was an American. That would seem work as an explanation for Runaway, which he wrote under his pen name Michael Halliday, who everyone presumed to be a British writer.

It feels a little less good as an explanation when think back to his westerns, although as most of these were written before his first visit to America, in 1949, I suppose he did think of himself, when writing as Tex Riley or William K Reilly, as a British writer of westerns.

Knowing now that these are his own words, what do you think?

Richard:

Delighted to see such a full reply from so busy a man and promptly, too!

What do I think? Well, I think your father probably changed his mind about some things over the decades, just like most of us do. His comment about not writing from American viewpoints was perhaps made long after he'd stopped writing Westerns, and perhaps after he'd forgotten about Bob Curran, just one non-series hero in such a huge and remarkable catalogue of writings.

I'm sure the comment was true in so far as it could be applied to current writings at the time he made it.

Another complication that occurred to me was, where does this leave the Mark Kirby books written under the Robert Caine Frazer byline? I've not come across any of these in a long, long time and I don't remember having read any. But I understood that they were stories set in America and that Mark Kirby was of the "private eye" ilk, and presumably American.

Since finding the h2g2 site (and its Creasey pages) two days ago, I discovered yesterday the entry made by you just last week on your father's Westerns. Coincidentally, I'm an author of Westerns myself, now working on my tenth for Robert Hale Ltd as "Chap O'Keefe". And I'm not American! I'm an Englishman resident in New Zealand. Also, although I've been a fan of Creasey crime books since boyhood (I even corresponded with him on a couple of occasions), I don't believe I've ever seen a Riley/Reilly/Ranger Western, though I knew they existed since your father had included them in the lists he kindly sent me of his work back in the late 1950s.

I often wonder if my own Westerns have some of the flavour of your father's -- with due allowance, of course, for being written for today's audience. Anyone who'd like to know more about these "British Westerns" might try visiting www.blackhorsewesterns.com.

Best wishes,

Keith Chapman