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Peter’s first ‘professional’ piece of writing was at the age of 14, when he won a literary competition in a boys’ magazine (the prize was half a guinea, and he asked the editor why it couldn’t be the full one). At 17 he started writing skits for stage stars George Carney and Bransby Williams. Reggie decided to give up his law career, to his mother’s regret, to write full-time for the theatre, but this promising start was interrupted by the First World War. In 1953, two years after the death of Peter Cheyney, Gerald Vernier adapted Dangerous Curves for the stage and summed up the appeal of the author in his programme notes: THE FABULOUS PETER CHEYNEYPeter Cheyney died in the knowledge that he retained an immense public who revelled in his incomparable gift for story-telling. His legion of admirers still read avidly the books that poured from his vivid and inexhaustible imagination. His characters were drawn from life with a sure hand and a discerning eye. He spoke their language, knew their queer codes, mixed at his ease among them in the strange half-lights and shadows of the underworld he knew so well. Lemmy Caution, the hard bitten, wise-cracking F.B.I. man; the sinister Ernie Guelvada with his knife; the inscrutable Mr. Quayle; the debonoir Shaun Aloysius O’Mara, and , perhaps the most popular of all, the tough, ironic Slim Callaghan, are all characters from the Cheyney collection known throughout the world. |
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click book to view
special signature edition of They Never Say When |
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| The dazzling Cheyney women are famous. No other writer has succeeded in portraying glamour so brilliantly. From their high-heeled shoes to the tops of their shapely heads, it is easy to visualise these lovely and exquisitely dressed ‘dames’ who are so entrancing to look at and, sometimes, so vicious and evil underneath.
Peter Cheyney still lives through the medium of his books... Perhaps Peter Cheyney was talking about the same woman in Your Deal, My Lovely, when he wrote “I am tellin’ you that the south view of this dame from the east when she is walkin’ north would make a blind man turn to hard liquor.” “Mrs. Charlesworth was a plump and pleasant woman of forty. Her hair was freshly waved, her frock fashionable. Callaghan looked at her admiringly.” Calling Mr. Callaghan go to: first chapter • previous chapter |
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signed title page of Sinister Errand, dedicated to Mrs. Sprague, Cheyney’s secretary to whom he dictated most of his books
image courtesy of Nigel Williams Rare Books (see LINKS) |
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“May I take the message? Her Ladyship has just curled up with Peter Cheney!”
Cartoon from Blighty magazine, May 1947, by S Seymour (spelling as original caption) |
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