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. The immediate success of these two novels assured him of a flourishing new career, and Cheyney abandoned his work as a freelance investigator. Sales were brisk; in 1946 alone, 1,524,785 copies of his books were sold worldwide. A meticulous researcher, he kept a massive set of files on criminal activity in London. The files were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941, but he soon began replacing his collection of clippings. Cheyney dictated his work. Typically he would "act out" the stories for his secretary, Miss Sprauge, who would copy them down in shorthand and type them up later. The Caution books read very much like what they are: pulp stories written in ersatz American by a British writer. Slim Callaghan, however, is a non-American based in Cheyney's home territory of London. In the first Callaghan novel, the private detective works from
Chancery Lane in a
Marlowe-type shabby office and he has difficulty paying the bills. Unlike Marlowe, however, Callaghan is ambitious, and after success helping a rich female client, he is able to make the step up to having his own agency with a fancy office and a pretty secretary in
Berkeley Square. Subsequent novels in the series follow a tried and tested pattern. Callaghan's services are sought by a rich and attractive female who typically is involved in some upsetting business (often blackmail) that precludes her from going to police. Callaghan meets the lady, likes what he sees (Cheyney appears to have studied women's fashion, for he never fails to describe in detail every lady's clothes and jewellery), and is nonchalant and impudent, which simultaneously upsets and attracts her. The new client is either afraid to tell all the facts or is deliberately misleading him, and Callaghan must work out the truth for himself. Callaghan begins his investigating, in Marlowe-style, by putting himself about and stirring up trouble, which attracts the attention of a number of people (including at least one shady nightclub owner) who are parts of the puzzle, and who supply him with enough information to plan further strategy. During these cases, usually over a period of days, Callaghan will push himself to the limit. He will get no sleep, drink continually ('three fingers of straight whisky'), and drive his Jaguar long distances. He will meet a string of attractive women who throw themselves at him, while he only has eyes for his refined client. He will hand out and receive beatings, tamper with evidence, and outsmart both criminals and the police until the case is solved and his client is extricated from trouble and danger. Only then (to the chagrin of his secretary, who has a long-standing crush) will he reap the dual reward of favours from the client accompanied by a substantial cheque. , London, in 2015 Cheyney's "Dark" series was widely praised during
World War II for bringing more realism to espionage fiction. In their casual brutality and general "grubbiness," the "Dark" novels seem to have foreshadowed much of the Cold War fiction of the mid to late 1960s.
Anthony Boucher placed these later works in the context of
Graham Greene and
Joseph Conrad. The characterisation of Ernest Guelvada in the "Dark" series is one of the high points of Cheyney's career. A cheerfully sadistic war operative whose objective is to deplete the ranks of opposing forces in a leisurely but thorough fashion, the loquacious Guelvada still finds the time to dress immaculately, drink immoderate amounts of alcohol and remain a counter agent. Cheyney published one volume of short stories, advice to critics and a few poems in
No Ordinary Cheyney (London: Faber and Faber, 1948). Cheyney makes a cameo appearance in the
Dennis Wheatley/J.G. Links "dossier" mystery "Herewith the Clues," published in 1939. He appears as man-of-fortune William Benson, one of the suspects. He died at age 55, after having fallen into a coma. He was buried at
Putney Vale Cemetery in London. ==Personal life==