Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 15 Oct 2025

Inspector West Makes Haste by John Creasey

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time for me to read some of the big-selling, popular authors of the recent past that I have previously neglected or even scorned. Something must be making them hugely popular, so was I avoiding them out of a misplaced literary snobbishness or because they really are not to my taste? There was, I reasoned, only one way to find out.

So that’s how John Creasey came onto the scene – helped I should say by coming across the first edition hardback with an irresistible jacket that is shown in the attached photograph.

Creasey (1908 -1973) was, by any measure, a writing machine. He produced over 600 novels and wrote them under over twenty pseudonyms – some of them female for a series of romantic titles – but mostly he wrote in the detective or thriller genres. Like me, you may have heard of two or three of his most famous creations that spawned lengthy series – The Toff, Gideon of the Yard and Inspector West – and he was highly regarded in the crime writer community and he was responsible for setting up the Crime Writers Association (CWA) (https://thecwa.co.uk/) which is still going strong today.

I dived into Creasey’s 1955 novel, Inspector West Makes Haste, which chronologically comes about half way through the 43 book Inspector West series. As is the case with all long-running series, it’s vital that the reader makes a connection with the lead character and Creasey has made sure that it’s hard to dislike West. He’s youngish, chisel-jawed, so handsome that his police nickname is ‘Handsome’, faithful to his wife and family despite the attentions of often predatory women and, most importantly, morally scrupulous and fair-minded. Readers will immediately line-up on his side even when some cynicism about police practice seems to be called for.

I’m not going to say too much about the plot because these super-fast-paced thrillers need you to be able to surf along on the plot wave without quite knowing where the journey will take you. Suffice it to say that The Gelignite Gang are causing the police plenty of problems with their daring thefts of jewellery and when they set up a heist at the major store called Jeffersons, a nightwatchman loses his life. West needs answers quickly and he discovers that the owners of the store have some complex backstories going on and the solution may well lie in unwinding the tangles in the family’s past. The Gelignite Gang turn out to be more ruthless and vicious than you might have expected and West finds himself in serious danger on more than one occasion.

I raced through the book in just a couple of sittings and I think that’s certainly the way to tackle it. Creasey is clearly hugely skilled at spinning a plot, drawing you into West’s sphere of influence and making you turn a page but I think it’s important not to dwell on detail because you’ll be finding yourself asking questions about his (and West’s) assumptions about social class and gender. There’s undeniably of feeling of late Fifties British black & white movies or Dixon of Dock Green about and I was unsurprised to find that the radio adaptation had West voiced by the voice of British police/spies/dare-devils, Patrick Allen – a perfect match.

I’m happy to say that despite the fact that I’ve never really considered reading Creasey until now, I really enjoyed this and wouldn’t hesitate to take another with me on a journey or if I needed something intellectually undemanding – it’s the reading equivalent of putting your feet up and kicking back.

Paperback copies should be easy enough to find for very little money – so it’s largely risk-free if you want to taste and try.

 

Terry Potter

October 2025