Introducing the Toff

Toff #1

by John Creasey

A little road rage was not unusual even in the 1940s, but the Toff was not expecting bullets to be part of the argument when his Allard blocked the path of an oncoming Daimler in an English country lane. What had been a pleasant day playing cricket became the start of a lethal fight against cocaine rings, gangsters and the criminal empire of The Black Circle.

Genres: Mystery, Thriller, British Literature, Fiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1938

About the author

AKA Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Margaret Lisle, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J.J. Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton, Jeremy York, Henry St. John Cooper and Margaret Cooke.

John Creasey (September 17, 1908 - June 9, 1973) was born in Southfields, Surrey, England and died in New Hall, Bodenham, Salisbury Wiltshire, England. He was the seventh of nine children in a working class home. He became an English author of crime thrillers, published in excess of 600 books under 20+ different pseudonyms. He invented many famous characters who would appear in a whole series of novels. Probably the most famous of these is Gideon of Scotland Yard, the basis for the television program Gideon's Way but others include Department Z, Dr. Palfrey, The Toff, Inspector Roger West, and The Baron (which was also made into a television series). In 1962, Creasey won an Edgar Award for Best Novel, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Gideon's Fire, written under the pen name J. J. Marric. And in 1969 he was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award.

Reviews

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is British pulp fiction I guess. Certainly Creasey produced around six hundred novels in his career under his own name and various pseudonyms.
Sir Richard Rollison, whose not so secret alias is 'The Toff', is an aristocratic maverick whose strength and skill with guns and fists has made him feared among the criminal classes.
One night his car is shot at and disabled by an evil looking arab in a Daimler. Further down the road The Toff finds a man in a car, shot dead, and the shoe of a missing woman.
And so begins The Toff's investigation into a sinister drug smuggling organisation known as The Black Circle.
It's a fast paced read packed with colourful if admittedly one dimensional characters in a strange and distant London where people like Harry the Pug run villainous public houses in a docklands more akin to Treasure Island than Nineteen Thirties London, and where restaurants and pubs have secret passages to other establishments.
The Toff, whose feared calling card features only a stylised top hat, monocle and cane, is threatened by guns, bombs, gas and poisonous tarantulas but eventually wins through to save the day.
It's also a fascinating insight into the social culture of London in the Nineteen Thirties. The Toff has a personal bodyguard cum butler called Jolly. When the mysterious woman and her fiancé are forced to spend the night at The Toff's flat, proprieties have be observed. The couple are split into separate bedrooms and The Toff takes over Jolly's room, leaving Jolly banished to sleep in a chair.
It's fantastical hokum, but it's good fantastical hokum and taken in context, highly enjoyable.
The Toff is, one could argue, the Batman of British literature. He's a rich maverick aristocrat with no actual superpowers other than his intelligence, strength and prowess with weapons, fighting the criminal underworld with the occasional help of the police.
Give it a go. You might like it.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much a Saint wannabe. It's kind of The Saint Meets the Tiger crossed with J. J. Farjeon's "No. 17", which is not surprising when you know that Farjeon's novel was published in 1926, and Charteris' first "Saint" novel in 1928...and this one, a decade later. Creasey had obviously read them and wanted to try his hand at a saintly character of his own--right down to the calling card with a little doodle of a hat, cane and monocle to represent "The Toff"--another upper class crime fighter feared by all the London underworld.

The story itself is okay for its time and type (a potboiler is a potboiler after all) but it misses Charteris' humour and the author's ignorance (or laziness) shows at every turn. He refers to cocaine addicts as erotic wastrels, whatever that means, and an Egyptian drug cartel that is trying to break into the British market is described as an Oriental Ku Klux Klan--he obviously meant Mafia, but didn't know the difference. He also has the head of the operation swallow a dose of cocaine; not only have I never heard of that one before, but since when do cartel heads do drugs?
I was also surprised to read that in 1938 or so, British police cars communicated via Morse code, with a special officer in the back seat, listening and telling the guys up front what was said....???

Speaking of laziness...that wrap! The whole secret-tunnel, secret-rooms situation that was built up in great detail was jettisoned halfway through, as trope piled on trope. Creasey obviously had no idea where his yarn was headed till it went. Disappointing.

[Curt Buchmeier · Rating 2 out of 5]

My mother, who took me to the library early on, was a Toff fan. I never took the time, kind of forgot about this Creasey guy she used to read so much when I was a child.
I later (and now) enjoyed Hammett a lot, read everything I could find in my early adulthood. DH could put it out there; he lived it, built characters with dialogue & great story lines that you could believe. & Chandler was fun, just not as good as Hammett.
These were the peers & the competition. The contemporaries of Creasey.
So, when I saw the first Toff book on the table at the library; in large print even. & thought of my Mom. & since my glasses are no more(long story), I went ahead & grabbed it.
Now that I've read it, considering the other successful writers of the mid-thirties I've mentioned, I'm a bit disappointed. Can't recommend but will give the Toff another read because I think the character and the writing has to get better because, Good Lord; there's a whole Creasey section in the library.

[Kathy Davie · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in The Toff vintage mystery series and revolving around an aristocratic amateur sleuth. The focus is on the Honorable Richard Rollison, a.k.a. The Toff. It was originally published in 1938.

My Take
Creasey definitely gets it across, right from the start, of how feared the devil-may-care Toff is in the East End. Talk about a crime deterrent!

Creasey segues from this fear to a quick summary of how the Toff evolved from his moneyed worth and “a hatred of dullness” to his world tour of criminal enclaves and on to his defensive capabilities.

“Psychological terrorism.” If that doesn’t feel quite modern, I don’t know what does. As for the Toff's interactions with Scotland Yard . . . I "think" it's gotten a lot more restrictive these days, lol.

It’s a colorful cast of characters — and Richard finds himself bowled over by a woman for the first time. Woohoo. Yep, Creasey is using third person protagonist point-of-view from Richard’s perspective. It’s also a fascinating look at 1938 technology and culture with its over-the-counter meds.

Creasey introduces all sorts of doubt about a number of characters — the bad and the good. Frensham has his own doubts about the Toff and Anne’s reaction to him. I must say that Willow and Kellson are suspicious characters.

The Black Circle is clever in its drug distribution ideas.

It’s a simple, easy-read of a story with memorable characters, outrageous action, and daring rescues from an author of the Golden Age of detective stories.

The Story
What started as a pleasant day of cricket turned into a mysterious encounter with road rage, shooting, murder, and kidnapping. It’s too bad the bad guys captured Richard Rollison’s attention, for the Toff focuses on the why of it all.

The Characters
The Honorable Richard Rollison, a.k.a. Bernard Browning, alternates between being a man about town with a love for cricket to a suppressor of crime who lives in London. The dyspeptic Jolly is the Toff’s man. Bob and Patricia Tennant are friends of his who live in Surrey. They’ve had quite the adventurous life.

Scotland Yard
The Scottish Chief Inspector Horace McNab is one of the Toff’s contacts. Sir Ian Warrender is an assistant commissioner, who is popular with CID. Detective-Sergeant James Owen is cheerful. Chief Inspector Wilkinson is discreet. The Old Bailey is the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales.

Reginald Colliss is an archeologist who uses this as his excuse for being in Turkey investigating the Black Circle. Morley is his butler.

The Black Circle is . . .
. . . a worldwide criminal organization, a mixture of an Oriental Ku Klux Klan and Ogpu, with its headquarters in Stamboul, Turkey. Achmed Dragoli, a.k.a. Smithers, is their troubleshooter.

Paul Goldman has just returned from Turkey. Anne Farraway was in the car with him that night. She works at a Chelmsford estate office. Ted Frensham, a cricket enthusiast and a sales rep for a wholesale chemist, Longley, Fare and Company, is Anne’s fiancé.

Willow and Kellson Ltd are another firm with a warehouse near the River Tavern owned by Winkle. His daughter, Rene, had been rescued by the Toff.

Harry the Pug is a retired prize-fighter who runs the Red Lion in Shadwell and takes the occasional kill order. Squinty works for Harry. Garrotty is the latest Chicago Big Shot (or New York City??) currently hanging out at the Steam Packet. Red is one of the members of his gang in England. The Steam Packet, a semi-high-class restaurant in Lambeth, is owned by Blind Sletter. Castillo is Sletter’s manager.

Alice Bligh is the nurse and Dr Alderson the house surgeon at Grandleys. Those who fear the Toff include Lopez the Killer. The Weasel is a pickpocket. Daisy Lee is a successful hooker. Old Ben is the doorman at Daisy’s apartment building. Mr Jones has an account at the National United Bank. The Millers are having a hard time making a go of it.

The Cover and Title
The cover is a simple one with its muddy lime green background and a black silhouette of a man in a top hat. The author's name is in a brighter lime green at the man's shoulders with the title below it in white.

The title is true enough, for Creasey is Introducing the Toff.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had listened to some of the Toff episodes on BBC Radio and they are really charming. So I thought that I should give the books a go. What a disappointment. This one is like reading an old comic book but without the joy of the illustrations. Broad and outlandish, the character of Toff is simply too infallible and the supposed awe and fear in which he is held by Londoners is absurd. That being said, the mystery itself did pick up a bit toward the end, but not enough for me to try any further Toffs. One-and-a-half stars.

On another note, this is one of those poorly designed editions with formatting mistakes and typos abounding. Plus, just a really annoying cover. It's not the one accompanying my review here, because I just didn't want to encourage bad design. This vintage cover seen here is more to my taste in its campy retro feel.

[ShanDizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

but the Toff was a thing apart. Sometimes he worked on his own, and sometimes he worked hand-in-glove with the police. Not that he had any great love for the police as such, but having one great point in common with them – being the suppression of crime, particularly crime with violence, or drug trafficking, or blackmail, and that vilest trade of all, white slavery – co-operation was sometimes necessary.

Cracksmen and worse hated it most when the Toff worked on his own. On those occasions he adopted measures to attain his ends which would certainly have not been approved by the majesty of the law, but they were undoubtedly effective. The origin of the Toff’s campaign against crime was the subject of many wild rumours, but in point of fact it was simple. He came down from Cambridge worth half a mil- lion of money and with a hatred of dullness. To escape it he travelled the world’s farthest corners; and from the dope dens of Shanghai, the dives of San Francisco, and the cesspools of Marseilles, trickled fantastic stories of his speed on the draw, his uncanny accuracy with a knife, the punch like the kick of a mule, which he carried in both hands. And always they were concentrated in the one subject – the suppression of crime.

...psychological terrorism. It was simply a matter of making the other man think that you know a great deal more than you did, and getting him worried.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I'm generally a big fan of the gentleman detective genre this one left me a bit underwelmed. It has all the classic tropes of the genre, but is missing something.
The Toff is just too smooth, too perfect and yet feels a bit bland. We are told how amazing he is, and how he is the terror of the London underworld, but never told why. He seems fairly competent, but not really sure what the big deal is.
He doesn't have Bulldog Drummond's rough charm or Peter Whimsey's style and book obsession.

Personally, I was more interested in the background characters, the police commissioner across as pretty competent and the Tennants, friends of the Toff that seem to be hinting at being retired spies were interesting and I missed them when they were offstage.

Plus, the reveal of the 'mystery bad guy' felt like a bit of a cheat.

Not bad, worth trying another one to see if the series gets better, but not the best I've read.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good example of old fashion crime writing which proved thoroughly enjoyable.

[WhatShouldIRead]

This book really didn't hold my interest so I am putting it aside.

[Abel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and easy reading, it keeps your attention and never seems to drag. Makes me want to see if more books are written using the Toff as a detective, somewhat like Sherlock Holmes.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Toff is a character ahead of his time. He's basically a 1930's Bruce Wayne - he's wealthy, politically connected, handsome, debonair, well trained in weapons and fighting skills, and seemingly invincible. He strikes fear in the hearts of criminals all around greater London. This book is the first in a very long series. I'll definitely read more!

[David Macpherson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The gentleman crime fighter against the cocaine dealers of London. I know this is a well liked series and people dig them, but this left me terribly cold. The construction of the story was haphazard and it felt endless. I know it was not a long book, but I just felt it was never going to get anywhere. This series is a pass for me.

[J Grimsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this through Kobo. A good Thriller I thought it was post WW2 but it is pre war. I felt echo's of Paul Temple and the "By Timothy" expletive. Interesting that it includes an element of prostitution.

[Ronnie Rice Talbot · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Gran's Favorite Detective Series.
Book 1.

[Mirkats · Rating 1 out of 5]

im afraid it wasnt at all good