John Creasey (17 September 1908 – 9 June 1973) was an English author known mostly for detective and crime novels but who also wrote science fiction, romance and westerns. He 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.