The extortioners

John Creasey was an English crime and science fiction writer who wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms. He created several ongoing characters, such as The Toff (The Honourable Richard Rollison), Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard, Inspector Roger West, The Baron (John Mannering), Doctor Emmanuel Cellini, and Doctor Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey. Gideon of Scotland Yard was the basis for the television series Gideon's Way and for the John Ford movie Gideon's Day (1958). The Baron character was made into a 1960s TV series starring Steve Forrest as The Baron.