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Dressed to Kill
Four Square Book #626.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
About the author
Peter Cheyney
138 books31 followersBorn Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse Cheyney, he trained as a lawyer before getting tired of legal office work and joining the Army. He fought at the second Battle of the Somme in World War I and was wounded but when he returned to England he wrote songs, poems and short stories for various newspapers and magazines and used many pseudonyms.
He also turned his hand to journalism, was a newspaper editor and also owned a detective agency, Cheyney Research Investigations.
His first published novel was This Man Is Dangerous and this began his prolific novel writing career. Thereafter he averaged two mystery novels a year with his best known characters being Slim Callaghan and Lemmy Caution and he became one of the best known and most successful of British crime novelists. His success also brought with it financial rewards and he was recognised as one of the richest authors of the time.
There have been many film versions of his works, which helped spread his popularity, particularly to the United States.
His life-style, one of hard-living, much like his characters, and hard work eventually took their toll and he died at age 55. He was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery.
Michael Harrison published a biography in 1954 entitled Peter Cheyney Prince of Hokum and there have been a number of biographical essays over the years.
Gerry Wolstenholme
December 2010
He also turned his hand to journalism, was a newspaper editor and also owned a detective agency, Cheyney Research Investigations.
His first published novel was This Man Is Dangerous and this began his prolific novel writing career. Thereafter he averaged two mystery novels a year with his best known characters being Slim Callaghan and Lemmy Caution and he became one of the best known and most successful of British crime novelists. His success also brought with it financial rewards and he was recognised as one of the richest authors of the time.
There have been many film versions of his works, which helped spread his popularity, particularly to the United States.
His life-style, one of hard-living, much like his characters, and hard work eventually took their toll and he died at age 55. He was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery.
Michael Harrison published a biography in 1954 entitled Peter Cheyney Prince of Hokum and there have been a number of biographical essays over the years.
Gerry Wolstenholme
December 2010
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 15, 2016
My parents gave this book when I was a teenager and I have only just read it!
If you like your detectives and crooks hard-boiled you’ll probably like Peter Cheyney’s because I reckon they had at least half an hour. The style of this story put me in mind of Raymond Chandler, which I guess is to be expected given that they were contemporaries. Cheyney was a journalist and free-thinker with a huge personality, who frequented the clubs of London and knew many of the night club owners and criminals of his day, from whom he drew inspiration for his crime novels, which he did not begin writing until he was 40. As he died at age 55, in 1951, his final career was short, though he managed to write many popular books, from which he earned a good deal of money.
We have become accustomed, since the 1960s, to think of the East End and South London as the centres of the capital’s crime activity, thanks to the Krays and their rivals that focused so much attention on that subject. Cheyney, on the other hand, wrote about the West End’s classy, high-end clubs, brothels and gambling dens frequented by patrons with lots of money to spend, and the criminals who took it from them.
You must try to forget the film with the same name (Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson), great movie though it is, because this Dressed to Kill is a completely different story.
It features Rufus Gaunt, a smart (and smartass) private detective who run rings around the criminals and the police to achieve the result he seeks. The characters are not very well developed and the main character is a tough guy in a very 1950s Hollywood sort of way. Elements of the story did not come across to me as very realistic, such as the fact that the police officer in charge of the case allowed him access to the murder victim’s flat and he also shared a lot of information with him about the police investigation, something I feel would be unlikely. One of the plot lines is a bit over complicated too, though that never stopped Agatha Christie!
Chaney was also a contemporary of Christie and I think one reason his books were so popular may be because they are so different to Christie’s. No big country houses and genteel characters pondering a weekend murder among the guests; rather, hard-bitten criminals with an agenda of greed, out to fleece their genteel clients, who themselves are prone to desiring some gambling, a prostitute or some drugs. The criminals are from working class backgrounds and prey on the upper classes, a reversal of fortunes, if you like, that may have appealed to a British populace that, in the Thirties, enjoyed no National Health Service, poor housing, poor wages and were expected to be deferential to their ‘betters’.
The overall feel of it, the environments and the attitudes of many of the characters did seem quite realistic. Cheyney knew human nature and he knew how criminals operated so this is a fascinating insight into the kind of things that were going on in the underground world of London at that time. The book includes a long introduction and history of Cheyney’s life, which was very interesting but too long and sycophantic – Chapter 1 did not appear until page 38 of a 187 page book.
Bear in mind that this is a product of its time, so it’s all about the men when it comes to the clever stuff. The women are essential to the story but they are not given equal billing, except as decoration.
I have to say, though, that I enjoyed reading this book and will read the other two Cheyneys that I own. They are fun and they do keep you guessing. It will be interesting to see if the women have more to say for themselves in the next one.
3 stars
If you like your detectives and crooks hard-boiled you’ll probably like Peter Cheyney’s because I reckon they had at least half an hour. The style of this story put me in mind of Raymond Chandler, which I guess is to be expected given that they were contemporaries. Cheyney was a journalist and free-thinker with a huge personality, who frequented the clubs of London and knew many of the night club owners and criminals of his day, from whom he drew inspiration for his crime novels, which he did not begin writing until he was 40. As he died at age 55, in 1951, his final career was short, though he managed to write many popular books, from which he earned a good deal of money.
We have become accustomed, since the 1960s, to think of the East End and South London as the centres of the capital’s crime activity, thanks to the Krays and their rivals that focused so much attention on that subject. Cheyney, on the other hand, wrote about the West End’s classy, high-end clubs, brothels and gambling dens frequented by patrons with lots of money to spend, and the criminals who took it from them.
You must try to forget the film with the same name (Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson), great movie though it is, because this Dressed to Kill is a completely different story.
It features Rufus Gaunt, a smart (and smartass) private detective who run rings around the criminals and the police to achieve the result he seeks. The characters are not very well developed and the main character is a tough guy in a very 1950s Hollywood sort of way. Elements of the story did not come across to me as very realistic, such as the fact that the police officer in charge of the case allowed him access to the murder victim’s flat and he also shared a lot of information with him about the police investigation, something I feel would be unlikely. One of the plot lines is a bit over complicated too, though that never stopped Agatha Christie!
Chaney was also a contemporary of Christie and I think one reason his books were so popular may be because they are so different to Christie’s. No big country houses and genteel characters pondering a weekend murder among the guests; rather, hard-bitten criminals with an agenda of greed, out to fleece their genteel clients, who themselves are prone to desiring some gambling, a prostitute or some drugs. The criminals are from working class backgrounds and prey on the upper classes, a reversal of fortunes, if you like, that may have appealed to a British populace that, in the Thirties, enjoyed no National Health Service, poor housing, poor wages and were expected to be deferential to their ‘betters’.
The overall feel of it, the environments and the attitudes of many of the characters did seem quite realistic. Cheyney knew human nature and he knew how criminals operated so this is a fascinating insight into the kind of things that were going on in the underground world of London at that time. The book includes a long introduction and history of Cheyney’s life, which was very interesting but too long and sycophantic – Chapter 1 did not appear until page 38 of a 187 page book.
Bear in mind that this is a product of its time, so it’s all about the men when it comes to the clever stuff. The women are essential to the story but they are not given equal billing, except as decoration.
I have to say, though, that I enjoyed reading this book and will read the other two Cheyneys that I own. They are fun and they do keep you guessing. It will be interesting to see if the women have more to say for themselves in the next one.
3 stars
November 27, 2012
Not the best example of the hard-bitten-detective genre I have come across. A penchant for characters whose sardonic grins act as a substitute for any real exploration of personality or motivation left me unable to relate to any it. Lacking the poetry of Raymond Chandler it was rendered all the less gripping by being related in the third person. I also saw the outcome 200 miles off. There seem to be a huge number of books that share the title as well, which reflects badly on the editors whichever way you cut it. Were they too lazy to check, too ill-informed to notice or too unimaginative to bother?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews