Sat 19 Sep 2009
JOHN CREASEY – A Rocket for the Toff. Pyramid R-1085, paperback original; 1st US printing, October 1964. UK editions: Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1960; Hodder 563, paperback, 1963.
John Creasey simply wrote too many books for me to claim to be an expert on all of them, including the reprints, both in England and the US. So when the cover of the Pyramid edition of A Rocket for the Toff claims that it”s the first of Creasey’s Toff adventures to be published over here in this country, I haven’t checked it out positively, but I’ve done enough so far that I’m inclined to believe it.
And to that end, there is a two page introduction by John Creasey in which he explains who The Toff is (Richard Rollinson) and what a toff is (“a man who is stylishly dressed, or who has a smart appearance […] a gent, in fact”).
I don’t remember where I bought my copy of this book, except that I had just started grad school, so it would have been Ann Arbor, but which of several sales outlets, including drug stores — all of which I remember rather vividly — I cannot say for sure, but what I am sure of is that I appreciated the introduction, as otherwise how would I have known what a toff was?
But buy the book I did, and now I can say that I have read it. (Whether or not I read this one at the time, I cannot say, but Pyramid published several of these Toff adventures within a period of a few months, and read some of them, I did.)
This one starts out in fine fashion, full of action, furor and mystery from page one onward, as a young girl hoping to meet her fiance at the London airport, after two years’ absence in the US, is sadly disappointed when he does not arrive. Even more, she’s involved in a serious accident involving a man, his sister, and their dog that results in her being knocked to the ground and knocked out.
To her rescue comes Dr. Mike Kennedy, who believes her story when the police are polite but somewhat skeptical. He (the doctor) is also somewhat taken by her and personally takes her home. He is also a good friend of the Toff, whom the next day he calls in on the matter.
And it is a good thing, too, as Kate Lowson — that’s her name — and her apartment, is the subject of several break-in’s and attacks, but for what reason she does not know.
And as long as the spotlight is on Kate and Dr. Kennedy, the action is focused and direct. But once the basis of the affair is revealed — the “rocket” of the title is nothing more than a new secret brand of automobile with amazing (almost science-fictional) abilities — it seems as though all of the mystery is gone, and the reader-s interest with it. (Speaking for myself, that is.)
It remains to the Toff and his friend Superintendent Grice of Scotland Yard to clean up from here, but also from this point on, the story no longer seems personal, having lost (in my opinion) all of its immediacy. Lots of derring-do, which as always keeps the pages turning, but all in all, it’s all fairly lackluster, I’m sorry to say.
September 19th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Not my favorite Toff outing. I liked A Knife for the Toff and The Toff in New York (both of which were among the first Pyramid titles) much better.
But frankly, even minor Toff outings are entertaining, fast moving, and professional.
September 19th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
I’ve done some investigating, and I’ve come up with the following Toff books which were published in the US first by Pyramid as paperback originals.
A Rocket for the Toff, Oct 1964
The Toff in New York, Oct 1964.
A Knife for the Toff, Nov 1964.
Leave It to the Toff, Jan 1965
Model for the Toff, Feb 1965.
Terror for the Toff, 1965. (aka The Toff on the Farm)
Poison for the Toff, June 1965. (aka The Toff on Ice)
I have books in my collection that were done later on by Pyramid, but they were published first by Walker (I believe) in hardcover.
I’ve also been looking back for reviews I’ve written for other books in the series, and I found two reviews here on the blog that I hadn’t quite forgotten about, but almost.
Here’s the first
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=330
and here’s the second
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=344
The second of these lists all of the Toff books, and goes into some depth as regards the character.
Rereading these reviews, they both match my impression of this one. Creasey was great on the thriller aspects of his books, but they’re weak on actual detection, and overall (or maybe within books themselves) his work was rather uneven.
But, truth be told, given a choice, I think I’d rather read a Toff book than almost any other current thriller novel I can think of, unevenness and all, even when I know (and this is difficult to explain) that most current thriller novels are, when it comes down to it, better written and better done.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
The Toff and his world and Creasey’s worlds in general are satisfying. The thriller elements are well handled, and the action is almost always well choreographed, and if the detection isn’t on classical lines we have to remember Creasey began his career on the likes of Sexton Blake and following Edgar Wallace and Lesile Charteris.
But along the way Creasey developed a real talent for creating the worlds and milieu his heroes live and operate in. The Toff, the Baron, Roger West, Gideon, Dr. Palfrey, Dawlish, and Gordon Craigie live in well realized worlds surrounded by recognisable human beings, and romantic and heroic as they may be, even the Toff and the Baron are presented as human.
Granted there is a lot of melodrama and some unlikely heroics and even coincidence, but we tend to accept it because it occurs inside a world that feels real — at least in the context of the work. Reading an adventure of one of Creasey’s heroes is like returning to an old friend, and if, like some real friends, they aren’t perfect, they are familiar, dependable, and comfortable to spend time with.
And while there are certainly thriller writers out there that write better than Creasey, I can think of a good dozen major writers in the field who barely write decent high school English and don’t seem to know what the word syntax means. Creasey was amazingly consistent over his long career, which means you can pick up one of his books from almost any era and know you are going to enjoy yourself.
September 20th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Agreed with all of the above, David, except that I think his earlier thrillers were more better — more enjoyable, if you will — if not better written, than the books he wrote later on — or the ones he rewrote to “modernize” them and/or to make them more salable to US publishers.
I think he tapped into something early in his career, something that makes heroes and leaders what they are. The Toff does a great job in fighting crime, for example, but he couldn’t do it without his devoted Jolly nor the men from Ebbutt’s gym in London’s tough East End.
From page 43: “I also know Ebbutt’s men would sell their souls for a certain Mr. Ar,” answered Kennedy. “The Torf’s a proper Torf to those boyos.”
Where ROCKET went off the track, as far I was concerned, is where the thriller aspect ends, and the task of doing the necessary detective work begins.
September 20th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I agree, and some of the early books are better — the first four or five Baron titles could have run in Black Mask.
I always liked that Mannering stole from the rich both for a little revenge at the way they had casually ruined him and for the simple reason there is no money in stealing from the poor. In The Durable Desperados W. Vivian Butler points out that John Mannering is the most practical and in many ways the most believable of the gentleman crooks. Even his reform and latter career are believably done.
More than any other series heroes Creasey’s characters live and function in a very social world. They are far from lone wolf’s
— even when you would expect that of them.
Incidentally one of the early books worth reading is I Am the Withered Man, one of the titles in the Bruce Murdock Liberator series, the unique thing being that the novel is narrated by the villain, a Gestapo agent who is a bit of a knock off of Valentine Williams Clubfoot.
And I admit I’m a fan of the Palfrey books, which Creasey often used to express his political view (he ran for office and started his own party and movement). You have to admire how he takes the world to the brink in book after book, and then picks up the next adventure as if nothing happened in the volume before. At least one of the Palfrey books ends with no human life below the tree line, but you’d never know it in the next outing. That takes a certain chutzpah. And yet in his other series he manages a certain continuity that is itself surprising in light of how many series he wrote.
September 21st, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I think there may be a little unfairness in criticizing Creasey for not writing detective novels, since at no point in his career did he ever pretend to be anything but a thriller writer. His first adult fiction ran in Thriller the legendary Brit pulp (not really a pulp, but the effect was the same) His models were Sapper, Edgar Wallace, Sexton Blake, and Leslie Charteris, and to his credit he took the kind of book they wrote and added his own touches including believable secondary characters that existed as more than mere card board cut outs for the hero to interact with.
In Death of a Postman, one of the Roger West series, Creasey opens with a young couple on their honeymoon in an exotic locale. With a few deft strokes he paints this likable couple, puts them in danger, and then orchestrates their brutal murder.
I recall at the time how much this shocked me. I don’t recall any of the victims in Agatha Christie or most of the mysteries I had read ever seeming that human or their deaths providing anything much but an excuse for the plot. Death of a Postman may be the first book I ever read where the victims were actual people and not plot elements.
I don’t mean to suggest Creasey creates fully developed human beings of these characters, only that he learned early on that the elements of suspense were heightened if the characters seemed more than puppets to the reader, and he developed a real skill for creating likable fallible humans who found themselves in trouble — and weren’t always rescued in time.
The Toff started out very much an imitation of The Saint, as Patrick Dawlish was a copy of Bulldog Drummond, and Roger West one of Edgar Wallace’s attractive Yard men. But Creasey was constitutionally incapable of creating lone wolf heroes. His characters grew, they changed, they acquired family, friends, and complete worlds. Even his gentelman adventurers tended to domesticity and socialization. Quite a few of the gentleman crooks had a sort of proto social conscience, at least of the Saintly sort, but the Baron was alone in applying it to the real world.
It might be noted that most of the gentleman adventurers, amateur sleuths, and even crooks did sterling service in the War, usually in intelligence like the Toff. John Mannering, the Baron, was a desk sergeant at an RAF base. Years later the Baron still maintained a passion for the underdog and a distrust of those with too much money or power. Most of Creasey’s heroes probably were Social Democrats, but one suspected Mannering often voted a straight Labour party ticket.
Creasey also choreographed action well. I can recall a sequence in one of the Baron books where Mannering is walking down the stairs of his flat. A man behind him has a gun, and Mannering knows the man at the door is a policeman. All the action takes place from the top of the stairs to the bottom, but the action is telescoped so that we are aware of Mannering’s every thought as he weighs his options, and chooses which action to take — all of which only takes seconds in real time, but creates palapable tension on the written page.
Granted there are inconsistencies in the books, and at times Creasey is too hasty, but most of time he delivers exactly what his readers want, and often as not more than they expect.