John Creasey: Ten Authors in One | The First of Many | Simple Facts | The Toff
Gideon of the Yard (as JJ Marric) | Department Z | Dr Palfrey
Patrick Dawlish (as Gordon Ashe) | As Jeremy York | Inspector West
Michael Fane and Dr Cellini | The Baron

Michael Halliday was the first of John Creasey's pseudonyms created by request. After the publication of the prize-winning Baron book, Cassels asked for 'a different kind of story', and Creasey was looking almost hungrily for new opportunities. So he wrote Three for Adventure, a tale of people caught up in a web of events in which they were utterly helpless - a departure from his usual style since he had no 'series' in mind. The book was an immediate success, and was serialised in the Daily Sketch, the Star Weekly (Canada), and many other newspapers in the Commonwealth.

Creasey found himself enjoying the freedom of writing without a series character about whom the story had to revolve, and decided to continue writing 'non-series' books under the Michael Halliday pseudonym. There was tremendous vigour and great good humour in the 'Hallidays'; so much so that even Maurice Richardson was stirred to call him 'an impossible bedfellow for depression'. These same characteristics remained with Halliday until 1952, and indeed beyond, when the author, using the same pseudonym, launched an experimental series, anticipating what his two sons (then 11 and 12) would be like in early manhood. He put these characters into a private enquiry agency, and called himself Michael Fane, their author father. The experiment lasted for four books but never fully satisfied Creasey. He began to change the Halliday atmosphere until the tension in these books - still about hapless victims of circumstance - became even greater.

Unable to use the name Halliday in the USA because of the highly successful 'native' Brett Halliday, Creasey used the pseudonym Jeremy York for the Halliday books in that country, although York was already acquiring a different style and mood in Britain. As he was writing two Hallidays a year, and his American York publishers (then Scribners) could publish only one a year, there came another split-personality and Kyle Hunt was born, published first by Simon & Schuster, then by Random House, Macmillan and World.

Even these did not quite satisfy the John Creasey, and as a consequence Halliday experimented yet again and in 1966 the character of Dr Emmanuel Cellini evolved. 'This,' said Creasey, 'is what Michael Halliday has been searching for.' In the United States especially, the character was immediately and remarkably successful.

Meanwhile, those earlier titles have tremendously exciting 'grip', and when they were re-issued by Lythway Press in England and first published in the United States by World, who call them 'vintage Creasey', generations of Halliday readers were able see the gradual evolution of an author spread over 30 years.

***These titles were revised and the character of Superintendent Folly was written in. British paperbacks and library reprints after 1970 are as by Jeremy York. All US editions are by John Creasey as Jeremy York.

*** These titles were revised and the character of Superintendent Folly was written in. British paperbacks and library reprints after 1970 are as by Jeremy York. All US editions are by John Creasey as Jeremy York.

All published in USA as by Kyle Hunt.