Dames Don't Care

INTRODUCTONReginald Evelyn Peter Southouse-Cheyney (1896–1951), who wrote as Peter Cheyney, was a British crime fiction writer who published between 1936 and 1951. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Cheyney lived much like his characters, working too hard, living the fast and careless life with a breathtaking abandon that eventually caught up with him. In addition to his literary skills, "he was a fencer of repute, a golfer, a crack pistol-shot, and a jiu-jitsu expert." Cheyney is best known for his stories about agent and detective Lemmy Caution. The series began in 1953 and proved internationally popular, even being adapted into a series of French movies starring Eddie Constantine. Another popular character was private detective Slim Callaghan, who also appeared in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations. * * * * Peter Cheyney was born in Whitechapel in 1896, the youngest of five children, and educated at the Mercers' School in the City of London. He began to write skits for the theatre as a teenager, but this ended with the advent of World War I, when he enlisted in the British Army in 1915. In 1916, he was wounded and published two volumes of poetry. His military service ended in 1917 with the end of the war. In the late 1920s, Cheyney took a job with the Metropolitan Police as a reporter and crime investigator. His start as a writer is said to have begun with a bet; when Cheyney remarked that anyone could write a book in the idiom of the American thriller—and put his money where his mouth is, wagering five pounds that he could. Cheyney sold his first story as the result of the bet. Cheyney wrote his first novel, the Lemmy Caution thriller This Man Is Dangerous, in 1936 and followed it with the first Slim Callaghan novel, The Urgent Hangman, in 1938. Their immediate success launched his career, and he abandoned his work as a investigator. Sales in 1946 alone topped 1.5 million copies of his books worldwide. He dictated his work. Typically he acted out stories for his secretary, Miss Sprauge, who would copy them down in shorthand and type them up later. He died at age 55, after having fallen into a coma. He was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery in London. —Karl Wurf Rockville, Maryland