Tue 24 Nov 2009
Reviewed by David L. Vineyard: ANTHONY MORTON (JOHN CREASEY) – Meet the Baron.
Posted by Steve under Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
ANTHONY MORTON (JOHN CREASEY) – Meet the Baron. Harrap, UK, hardcover, 1937. US title: The Man in the Blue Mask, Lippincott, hc, 1937.
As 1935 rounded to an end, John Creasey was broke and out of work — not unusual in those days — but there was a writing contest offering a handsome prize, and Creasey had his eyes on it.
He had already had some success with the adventures of Gordon Craigie of Z5 and the Toff at Monty Hayden’s Thriller , and he knew he could win that prize if he could finish the book he had in mind.
But he only had six days left.
For anyone else this might have been hopeless, but we are talking John Creasey, so I can’t wring much suspense from that end.
What’s remarkable is the book he churned out in those six days.
John Mannering, the Baron, is perhaps the most unusual of the gentleman crooks who dominated British thriller fiction between the wars. He is no swashbuckling Saint or decadent Raffles. He has a code, but it is unique to him, as is his sense of justice. He is the only one of the gentleman crooks who would have been perfectly at home in Black Mask (though The Saint did make it there, he didn’t really fit) along side Erle Stanley Gardner’s Phantom Crook, Ed Jenkins.
John Mannering stole for one very simple reason — he needed the money. He is an upper middle class gentleman who has a small income and a little land, and he would like to keep his comfortable life exactly as it is.
He could never find a job that would support that lifestyle, but crime… And true to his nature, he pursues his new career with a practical and no nonsense application of common sense.
No avenger he, though he does have a sense of justice that will give him trouble at times.
Mannering had been engaged to a well-to-do socialite, but when his money ran out she dumped him peremptorily without a second thought. Something changed in John Mannering, and the Baron was born.
The Baron began his new career even while he was hunting down old lags to teach him the skills he would need. He preyed only on those who could afford the loss, but unlike Raffles he didn’t mind stealing from his host. In fact it was a specialty of his. He even robs his ex-fiancee. At one point he steals a valuable wedding present, and then reminds the policeman guarding it to check the gifts while he tells the host.
The Baron persona is only born when an innocent man is accused of one of Mannering’s crimes. He writes the police a hectoring letter in the style of Arsene Lupin, and signs himself the Baron. Then he strikes again to prove his point.
Scotland Yard in the form of Bill Briscoe is drawn in. Briscoe is no helpless Ganimard (Arsene Lupin’s nemesis) or Claude Eustace Teal. He is a bright policeman, and he is soon on the trail of the Baron — whom he suspects is his friend Mannering.
Thus begins a long history of suspicion. Even in later years when Briscoe leaves the Yard to work for Mannering at Quinns, the exclusive auction house the Baron acquires after marrying his love, the portrait artist Lorna, and going straight, he still suspects his old friend of being the notorious Baron.
But he never proves it, despite Mannering’s seeming inability to stay out of trouble and his insistence on using the skills of the Baron to extricate himself and others from danger. Even at the end of Meet The Baron, when Mannering is wounded and risks his neck and freedom to rescue Briscoe, he manages to keep the Baron’s secrets.
Most of the gentleman crooks went into intelligence work when WW II came along. Mannering was a desk sergeant at an RAF base. It somehow seems fitting.
The Baron was the first of Creasey’s heroes to reach the American shores — for some reason called Blue Mask here — and a huge success in France and Italy where he became film auteur’s Jean Cocteau’s favorite crime fiction character. Umberto Eco made a special nod toward the Baron in his recent novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Lorna (2005).
The ITV television series The Baron had little to do with Creasey’s creation, with Mannering becoming American oil baron Steve Forrest who acquires Quinns and is drawn into adventures via that. Sue Lloyd and Barry Morse co-starred.
A forty year run is pretty good for any gentleman crook, forty seven outings from Meet the Baron (1937) to Love for the Baron (1979).
Creasey always seemed to put a little extra effort into the Baron’s adventures. Mannering reformed, but he never felt any angst or guilt about his past, and he was always willing to break out the Baron’s bag of tricks in the pursuit of justice — not terribly patient with police work, this fellow.
Meet the Baron by all means. He’s something a bit different from the usual run of gentleman crooks. But be warned, like candy, one calls for another, and there are forty-two years of adventures to catch up with.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
My only run-in with The Baron, reading-wise, was in the 1960s, and my only recollection of them is that the stories were rather dull.
It’s good to know that when the Baron started, he had a lot more edge to him, as did most of Creasey’s characters back then.
I imagine that down the line somewhere he had to make all his books and characters more respectable, even to the extent to revising the early ones. This was also, I suspect, what Creasey felt he had to do in order to crack the US market.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:12 am
The main problem Creasey had with the US market was lack of human interest in his stories according to his American publishers, which is why many of his books were revised for the US market.
His real success in the American market didn’t come until the advent of the Gideon books, though one of the Dawlish books, The Crime Haters, was done as a pilot and showed as the final episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller with an American Patrick Dawlish.
As you pointed out in an earlier review the Toff came in rather late, but it was likely his success and the ITV television series that brought the Baron back to our shores.
Of course, each to his own, I don’t think I ever read a dull outing of the Baron, though admittedly by the sixties the series was getting a bit long in the tooth. However, Deaf Dumb and Blonde is a good entry from that period as is If Anything Happens to Hester.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Yes, you’re right about Creasey’s success over here not occurring until the Gideon books, and if he’d put his own name on them, the critics still would have panned him, I believe. Luckily he used J. J. Marric, which meant the books were rated on their own merits.
You’re also right, I’m sure, that he wasn’t really successful until he brought more of his characters’ family lives and so on into the books.
But while I wasn’t exactly bored with the Gideon books, I didn’t find a whole lot of life in them either — in the sense, like the Baron, a lot of his characters’ rough edges had been smoothed out by the time the 1960s came around. No more rough and tumble, no more rowdiness.
November 25th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I read MEET THE BARON for the first time only recently. Thoroughly enjoyed it. What are your choices for best in the series?
November 25th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Bradstreet
Keep in mind this is a strictly personal list.
First any of the first eight Baron novels from 1937 to 1940 (at least the first five were published in the US as Blue Mask novels):
Meet the Baron
The Baron Returns
The Baron Again
The Baron at Bay
Alias the Baron
The Baron at Large
Versus the Baron
Call for the Baron
After that, at random:
The Baron Comes Back (1943 the first Baron after a three year hiatus during the War)
The Baron in France
Deaf Dumb and Blonde
If Anything Happens to Hester
The Double Frame
The Baron and the Moghul Swords
Affair for the Baron
The Baron on Board
But I admit Affair for the Baron only makes the list because it is set at the San Antonio World’s Fair and I attended. But most of the Baron outings from about 1950 to the mid sixties are worth a read. These are just personal picks. And also quite a few of these have multiple titles, and I have gone with the title I read it under. But almost any of the series are good examples of Creasey’s talents and if you like his work you will probably enjoy them.