In the series of adventure novels by John Creasey, the Toff is the nickname of the Honourable Richard Rollison, an upper-class crime sleuth.[1] Creasey published almost 60 Toff adventures, beginning with Introducing the Toff in 1938 and continuing through The Toff and the Crooked Copper, published in 1977, four years after the author's death.
Rollison is in many ways similar to Simon Templar, although Creasey's other character The Baron bears an even closer resemblance. Unlike Templar, Rollison has no earlier life of crime, although he frequently breaks or bends the law in pursuing his investigations.
Rollison's calling card includes a caricature of a toff—a line drawing with a top hat, monocle, bow-tie and cigarette with a holder. His flat includes a trophy wall, on which is a memento of every case Rollison helped to solve.
In these stories Rollison is moderately well-known, as his exploits are frequently reported in the newspapers. He is as at home in upper-crust society circles as he is in the East End of London.
Bibliography
The Toff was introduced in the tuppenny weekly crime magazine The Thriller in 1933,[2] while the first novel was published in 1938.
Magazines
The Black Circle, The Thriller, 2 Dec 1933
Murder of a Tramp, The Thriller, 13 Jul 1935
The Man Who Knew, The Thriller, 6 Mar 1937
The Toff and the Terrified Lady, The Creasey Mystery Magazine, Aug 1956
Death to Joy, The Creasey Mystery Magazine, Sep 1956
The Toff Beside the Sea, The Creasey Mystery Magazine, Feb 1957
The Toff Takes Shares, John Creasey Mystery Magazine, Oct 1958
The Love Racket, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, May 1959
"Hate for the Toff", Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Oct 1959
The Toff and the Unknown Victim, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Nov 1959
"Death Beneath the Apple Tree", John Creasey Mystery Magazine, Apr 1960
"The Toff and the Watching Eyes", John Creasey Mystery Magazine, Jan 1962
"Race to Death", John Creasey Mystery Magazine, Mar 1962
The Toff and the Killer, John Creasey Mystery Magazine, Apr 1962
"The Mark of the Thief", John Creasey Mystery Magazine, Dec 1963[3]
The Toff and the Kidnapped Child (1960) a.k.a. The Kidnapped Child
Follow the Toff (1961)
The Toff and the Teds (1961) a.k.a. The Toff and the Toughs
A Doll for the Toff (1959)
Leave It to the Toff (1962)
The Toff and the Spider (1965)
The Toff in Wax (1966)
A Bundle for the Toff (1967)
Stars for the Toff (1968)
The Toff and the Golden Boy (1969)
The Toff and the Fallen Angels (1970)
Vote for the Toff (1971)
The Toff and the Trip-Trip-Triplets (1972)
The Toff and the Terrified Taxman (1973)
The Toff and the Sleepy Cowboy (1974)
The Toff and the Crooked Copper (1977)
After Creasey's death, William Vivian Butler wrote The Toff and the Dead Man's Finger (1978).[4]
Play
In 1961, Creasey wrote a play titled The Toff for the Salisbury Arts Theatre.[5]
Main characters
Richard Rollison
The Toff is a wealthy bachelor living in a Mayfair flat at 22 Gresham Terrace. Although the settings of the stories keep up with the times, Rollison himself maintains an age of roughly 40 throughout. He is described as over six feet tall, with dark hair. Rollison's friends refer to him as Rolly, and acquaintances from the East End refer to him as "Mr. Ar".
Jolly
Jolly is Rollison's valet, as well as a partner is his investigations. He is described as dour and sad-looking, and is in every way the proper gentleman's gentleman.
Superintendent William "Bill" Grice
Superintendent Bill Grice of Scotland Yard shows respect for Rollison's abilities and contributions, but nonetheless complains about his methods. Grice bears a scar on his face from a case in which Rollison was involved.
Richard Shuttleworth
Shuttleworth owns the stables at the end of Shoreditch Lane. He also acts as Rollison's apprentice in many novels.
Supporting characters
William "Bill" Ebbut
Bill Ebbut is the proprietor of the Blue Dog Gymnasium, in which he trains fighters, and The Sailor's Arms public house. Ebbut frequently provides trustworthy men to act as guards or trail suspects. In The Toff and the Golden Boy, Ebbut is described as follows:
He had a big head, pendulous jowls, no neck to speak of, and a huge chest merging into a mammoth waist-line. All the time he breathed, he wheezed.
Lady Gloria Hurst
Lady Gloria Hurst is Rollison's aunt. Her home is the Marigold Club, where she takes in women requiring temporary assistance. She occasionally protects women involved in Rollison's adventures.
At least six early novels, namely Introducing the Toff, The Toff Steps Out, Here Comes the Toff, Salute the Toff, The Toff Proceeds, and The Toff Is Back, were adapted into a serial by Australia's Crawford Productions in the late 1940s. Robert Burnard starred as the Toff. Hundreds of episodes are kept in Australia's National Film and Sound Archive.[6][7]
The 1961 production The Toff by Salisbury Arts Theatre Limited, which debuted on 17 April 1961 at Salisbury Playhouse, starred Michael Johnson as the Toff.[5]
Comics
A couple Super Detective Library comic books published by Amalgamated Press were adapted from Toff novels: The Toff at Butlin's (#61) and The Missing Millionaire (#110, based on A Six for the Toff).[8][9]
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murders. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the more than thirty novels and several short story collections in which Ellery Queen appeared as a character, and their books were among the most popular of American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. In addition to the fiction featuring their eponymous brilliant amateur detective, the two men acted as editors: as Ellery Queen they edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime, and Dannay founded and for many decades edited Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961, Dannay and Lee also commissioned other authors to write crime thrillers using the Ellery Queen nom de plume, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; several juvenile novels were credited to Ellery Queen, Jr. Finally, the prolific duo wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
John Dann MacDonald was an American writer of novels and short stories. He is known for his thrillers.
A mystery film is a genre of film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.
Brett Halliday is the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, an American mystery and western writer. Halliday is best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne mysteries he wrote and later commissioned others to write. Dresser wrote westerns, non-series mysteries, and romances under the names Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Peter Field, and Anderson Wayne.
John Creasey was an English crime writer, also writing science fiction, romance and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms.
Terence Joseph Alexander was an English film and television actor, best known for his role as Charlie Hungerford in the British TV drama Bergerac, which ran for nine series on BBC One between 1981 and 1991.
The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors’ organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its Dagger awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. The Association also promotes crime writing of fiction and non-fiction by holding annual competitions, publicising literary festivals and establishing links with libraries, booksellers and other writer organisations, both in the UK such as the Society of Authors, and overseas. The CWA enables members to network at its annual conference and through its regional chapters as well as through dedicated social media channels and private website. Members' events and general news items are published on the CWA website which also features Find An Author where CWA members are listed and information provided about themselves, their books and their awards.
In British English slang, a toff is a stereotype for someone with an aristocratic background or belonging to the landed gentry, particularly someone who exudes an air of superiority. For instance, the Toff, a character from the series of adventure novels by John Creasey, is an upper class crime sleuth who uses a common caricature of a toff – a line drawing with a top hat, monocle, bow-tie and cigarette with a holder – as his calling card.
Henry Slesar was an American author, playwright, and copywriter. He is famous for his use of irony and twist endings. After reading Slesar's "M Is for the Many" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock bought it for adaptation and they began many successful collaborations. Slesar wrote hundreds of scripts for television series and soap operas, leading TV Guide to call him "the writer with the largest audience in America."
John Bentley was a British film actor who appeared in the 1970s as Hugh Mortimer, Meg Richardson's ill-fated new husband in the soap opera Crossroads. He also starred in the jungle adventure series African Patrol (1957) as Chief Inspector Paul Derek and made various other guest appearances.
Michael "Mike" Shayne is a fictional private detective character created during the late 1930s by writer Brett Halliday, a pseudonym of Davis Dresser. The character appeared in a series of seven films starring Lloyd Nolan for Twentieth Century Fox, five films from the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with Hugh Beaumont, a radio series under a variety of titles between 1944 and 1953, and later in 1960–1961 in a 32-episode NBC television series starring Richard Denning in the title role.
Liza Cody is an English crime fiction writer.
The Toff on the Farm is a 1958 mystery novel by John Creasey featuring his character the Honourable Richard Rollison, aka 'The Toff'.
Salute the Toff is a 1952 British crime film directed by Maclean Rogers and starring John Bentley and Carol Marsh. The film was based on the 1941 novel of the same name by John Creasey, the sixth in the series featuring upper-class sleuth Richard Rollinson, also known as "The Toff". This film and another Toff adaptation, Hammer the Toff, were shot back-to-back at Nettlefold Studios in the summer of 1951. They were released to cinemas in January and May 1952 respectively.
Hammer the Toff is a 1952 British crime film directed by Maclean Rogers and starring John Bentley and Patricia Dainton. The film was based on the 1947 novel of the same name by John Creasey, the 17th in the series featuring upper-class sleuth Richard Rollinson, also known as "The Toff". This film and another Toff adaptation Salute the Toff were shot back-to-back at Nettlefold Studios in the summer of 1951 with identical production credits and many of the same actors. Hammer the Toff was issued to cinemas in March 1952 as the sequel to Salute the Toff. There would be no further entries in the series of films. Although it was once considered lost, appearing on the British Film Institute's "75 Most Wanted" list of missing British feature films, it was released on DVD in March 2016. It was produced by Ernest G. Roy.
Bruno Fischer was a German-American author of weird and crime fiction.
The Toff Goes to Market is a 1942 crime thriller novel by the British writer John Creasey. It was the eighth in his long-running featuring the gentleman amateur detective The Toff. It was one of a number of novels produced in the era that featured the booming wartime black market as a major plotline. It has been republished on a number of occasions.
Salute the Toff is a 1941 crime thriller novel by the British writer John Creasey. It is the sixth in his long-running featuring the gentleman amateur detective The Toff.
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