Dennis Wheatley

• Born: January 8, 1897
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: November 10, 1977
• Place of death: London, England

Types of Plot: Espionage; historical; thriller

Principal Series: Duke de Richleau, 1933-1970; Gregory Sallust, 1934-1968; Julian Day, 1939-1964; Roger Brook, 1947-1974

Contribution

As a very young man, Dennis Wheatley wrote for his own pleasure; his career as a writer began only when financial need demanded it. Once he found an audience for his writing and saw the possibility for a comfortable income, he became involved in the advertising and marketing of his work. He was both a writer and a businessman, and once he recognized a new market, he adjusted for it.

During World War II, Wheatley’s reputation as a writer gained for him the opportunity to serve his country in an official capacity by using his imagination to assist military leaders in devising plans for defeating the enemy. His experiences in this capacity are related in Stranger than Fiction (1959).

Wheatley’s novels of crime, mystery, and espionage brought enjoyment to many people over a number of years. His attitude about producing fiction for the sake of the readers’ pleasure was expressed when he wrote, “From the beginning, I had always believed that the vast majority of my readers wanted to read about people of wealth or beauty, such as they never met in their own lives.” Wheatley succeeded as a writer because of his recognition of the needs and desires of those of his period who sought entertainment through reading.

Biography

Dennis Yeats Wheatley, the son of Albert David Wheatley and Florence Baker Wheatley, was born in London on January 8, 1897. In 1908, he was sent for a time to Dulwich College, a private school near where his family lived. From 1909 to 1913 he was a cadet aboard H.M.S. Worcester, chosen for him because of its reputation for producing young men of discipline. At the age of sixteen, Wheatley was escorted by his father to Germany, where at Traben-Trarbach he was expected to learn wine making from a local family. In less than a year, he was back in London, where he was put to work in his father’s wine shop on South Audley Street, in the Mayfair section of London.

As a boy of seventeen, Wheatley was extremely eager to join the army that was being formed in preparation for war with Germany. He was finally accepted in 1914 in the Royal Field Artillery, City of London Brigade. From 1917 until 1919, he served in France with the Thirty-sixth Ulster Division. His release from service was the result of his having developed bronchitis, having been exposed to the chlorine gas released by the Germans at the front.

Wheatley, after recuperating, went back to work in the family wine business. His first marriage, to Nancy Madelaine Leslie Robinson, lasted for just over nine years and produced a son, Anthony Marius. Wheatley’s second wife was Joan Gwendoline Johnstone.

Wheatley began writing as a way of earning a living. His first novel, Three Inquisitive People, though written in 1932, was not published until 1940. His second novel, The Forbidden Territory, published in 1933, was so well accepted that it set him on a career that was to give him great satisfaction both monetarily and artistically.

During World War II, Wheatley was the only civilian directly commissioned to serve on the Joint Planning Staff of the War Cabinet. For three years during the war, he served as one of Sir Winston Churchill’s staff officers. These positions came about because in 1940 and 1941, Wheatley had written a number of papers in which he had explained how the British might transport supplies from the United States via convoys of wooden rafts and how best to confuse the enemy should it invade and occupy England. Wheatley died in London on November 10, 1977.

Analysis

A small tombstone beneath which lie Dennis Wheatley’s ashes is inscribed:

Dennis Wheatley

8.1.97-10.11.77

“Prince of Thriller Writers”

RIP

“Prince of Thriller Writers” would have pleased Wheatley—indeed, he may have requested the inscription himself. It was in the pursuit of a life full of those things that princes might take for granted that Wheatley discovered and made use of a talent placing him among the “royalty” of British authors of action-oriented crime, mystery, and spy fiction during and since World War II.

Wheatley began writing seriously when business failures had left him in debt and without prospect for financial recovery. He was in his early thirties when he lost the wine business that had been given him by his dying father. Encouraged by his wife, who had read some of the short stories he had written years before for his own pleasure, he wrote his first novel. About his reaction to his wife’s suggestion that he write, Wheatley said in his memoirs:

I had little faith in my ability to do so and even if I did, and succeeded in getting a publisher to take it, I could not hope to make out of it more than about fifty pounds. But having a shot at it would at least take my mind off my worries; so I bought some paper and sat down to write a thriller.

From that beginning, Wheatley made of himself a successful writer, having more than seventy published works to his credit when he died at the age of eighty. He noted in his memoirs that his books had been published in thirty-one languages. He was especially proud of the many letters he had received from people who had enjoyed reading his books while bedridden.

Because he was dependent on the income from his writing, it was very important to Wheatley that his books have wide distribution. He took a serious interest in the demand for books, in the trends in what people were reading, and in the way in which his books were marketed. From the beginning of his writing career, he participated in the plans for advertising. To market his first book, he says:

I had 2000 postcards printed; on one side they had the pictorial end-papers of the book, on the other, alongside the space for the address, simply the title, date of publication and a request that the recipient, if he enjoyed adventure stories, should ask for the book at his library.

This book became a best seller and was reprinted seven times in seven weeks.

Wheatley’s first novels were historical thrillers, full of color and drama. As a young man, he had enjoyed reading historical novels; among his favorites were those of Alexandre Dumas, père. Wheatley does not, however, share the reputation of Dumas for altering historical fact to suit his fictional purposes. Wheatley, a lifetime student of history, insisted that the historical information in his novels be absolutely accurate. Not only did he receive critical praise for his novels’ historical accuracy, but also he was gratified to learn that his books were used successfully by teachers as a means to encourage their pupils to study history.

The Scarlet Imposter

In the late 1930’s, Wheatley decided that spy stories would be well received, now that there was a war on, and he wrote The Scarlet Imposter (1940). Of it, he said:

It was the longest book that I had so far written—172,000 words—and highly topical, as it covered the events of the war during the autumn and even, by remarkable good fortune, a forecast of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Moreover, during that first winter of the black-out people were reading as never before.

People were indeed reading more escapist fiction. With England engaged in an all-out defense effort, other popular forms of entertainment were less and less available.

The Scarlet Imposter features Wheatley’s Gregory Sallust. For fear that he might find himself stuck with one character and a limited following, as perhaps Sapper had with Bulldog Drummond and Leslie Charteris with the Saint, Wheatley inserted a message at the back of Faked Passports (1940), inviting readers to write to him and indicate whether they would prefer more of Sallust or a choice of other fiction subjects. The response favored Sallust; as a result, Wheatley continued his stories featuring the British agent.

Other Works

Four very popular novels that proved too expensive to continue in production were the so-called crime dossiers. Wheatley was given the idea by his friend Joe Links of including in a mystery novel photographs of real people and clues such as bits of hair, fabric, telegrams, and handwritten letters. The pages that revealed the solution to the mystery were sealed. Inclusion of the physical clues required special packaging, making the product unsuitable for use in lending and subscription libraries. The novels were rather expensive to buy, as well. They serve as evidence, however, of Wheatley’s interest in the marketing aspects of publishing. These “detective games” were Murder off Miami (1936), Who Killed Robert Prentice? (1937), The Malinsay Massacre (1938), and Herewith the Clues! (1939).

After the end of World War II, Wheatley was not sure whether he should continue writing espionage stories, because he had had access to secrets, knew the way in which the intelligence system worked, and feared that he would be accused of revealing classified information. The solution was to write espionage stories in a historical setting. Wheatley chose the Napoleonic Wars because they were so different from the most recent one, and Roger Brook became the new hero of espionage fiction.

Wheatley described himself as a hard worker, putting in thirteen or more hours per day, six or seven days a week. Encouraging aspiring young writers, he wrote that anyone willing to work very hard could achieve and maintain the same degree of success that he had enjoyed. He further maintained that he had succeeded in writing many best sellers, in spite of his serious difficulty with spelling and grammar, because of his determination and his understanding of what it took to satisfy the reader. He believed that he had mastered the ability to combine fiction and fact in such a way as to appeal to both emotion and intellect.

Principal Series Characters:

• Duke de Richleau , patterned after Athos in Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844; The Three Musketeers, 1846), was one of Dennis Wheatley’s favorite characters. A vivid and colorful figure, the duke is involved with many significant historical events during his long life (in his first appearance, it is 1894 and he is eighteen; he dies in 1960 at the age of eighty-five).
• Gregory Sallust is a British agent during World War II. Sent behind German lines to assist those in Germany who do not support Adolf Hitler, he attempts to bring about the latter’s defeat by various means, including, finally, use of the occult. At the end of the war, Sallust is married to Erika von Epp, his beautiful assistant.
• Julian Day has a flair for languages, and during World War II he is assigned to the Interpreter Corps in Cairo; he participates in Great Britain’s winning campaigns in North Africa and witnesses his country’s losses to the Nazis in Greece.
• Roger Brook is a special agent for Prime Minister William Pitt. During the period covered by Brook’s activities (1783-1815), he participates in espionage involving every important historical event and plays a role in the lives of significant figures such as the Dauphin Louis XVII and Napoleon Bonaparte. He is in love with Georgina Thursby; although married to another, he has an affair with Georgina throughout the series.

Bibliography

Cabell, Craig. Dennis Wheatley: Churchill’s Storyteller. Staplehurst, Kent, England: Spellmount, 2006. Tells the story of Wheatley’s experiences during World War II, when he worked for the British Joint Planning Staff, writing fake official documents that would then be fed to Nazi spies.

Hedman, Iwan. “Dennis Wheatley: A Biographical Sketch and Bibliography.” The Armchair Detective 2 (April, 1969): 227-236. Lists Wheatley’s novels alongside a discussion of his life and work.

Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel—A History. 3d ed. New York: Mysterious Press, 1993. Symons, a successful mystery author in his own right, argues that mystery fiction evolved over time from being concerned with the figure of the detective and the methods of detection to a primary focus on the nature of crime and criminality. Sheds light on Wheatley’s work.

Wheatley, Dennis. The Time Has Come: The Memoirs of Dennis Wheatley. 3 vols. London: Hutchinson, 1977-1979. Primarily focused on Wheatley’s childhood and youth: The first two volumes of this three-volume memoir cover the first twenty-two years of the author’s life, while the remaining years are relegated to the third volume.