John Creasey's The Honourable Richard Rollison,. a.k.a. The Toff, takes center stage in this comic book adaptation of his 1955 novel A Six for the Toff (also published as A Score for the Toff. You don't need to know much about cricket to follow this story.
"Richard Rollison was an adventurer -- a man known to the world as 'The Toff,' and feared by the underworld as an enemy of crime. Like most Englishmen he was fond of cricket, and it was just as he was about to leave for the oval that one of his most dangerous adventures began."
The American jewel collector Connor McGinn has telephoned the Toff with an offer of a thousand pound fee. When McGinn fails to appear at a scheduled morning meeting, Rollison proceeds to the cricket match, Jolly, Rollison's manservant, suspects something is off and goes to McGinn's hotel room, but the wealthy American is not there. A mysterious woman, Bella Daventry, is also looking for McGinn, as are New Scotland Yard, which had been asked to keep a protective eye on McGinn by the american authorities.
A man called Jeremiah meanwhile had headed to the cricket match where he hoped to meet Rollison. when he arrived he was struck by a car and killed. Bella Daventry saw the entire thing and recognized the man who had cause the fatal accident. She goes to his loft to confront him and he attacks her with a knife. Rollison had followed Bella and tries to stop the attack, but the man is killed in the struggle by Bella, who then flees.
This is where things begin to get complicated. Various thugs attempting to harm Rollison, murder attempts, a supposed kidnapping, and a beautiful damsel n distress (who may not be so innocent), and Rollison still has no idea what is behind it all. On top of that, he's missing his beloved cricket match! Luckily Rollison also has the help of Jolly and of East End gym owner Bill Ebbut (although in this comic book the name is spelled 'Ebbutt")...
Enjoy.
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=95806&comicpage=&b=i
Creasey created the Toff in 1933; the first Toff novel was published in 1938. The Toff stories originally followed a popular template of an aristocratic gentleman adventurer who operates outside legal boundaries; in later adventures, the Toff has lost his fortune in an economic collapse and becomes a private detective for hire. Creasy published 60 novels and one play about the character -- perhaps his most popular -- as well as a number of short stories. Following Creasey's death William Vivian butler published an additional novel. The character, played by John Bentley, appeared in two films in 1952, and six early Toff novels were serialized on Australian radio in the late 1940s with Robert Burnard as Rollison, and two further novels were adapted for BBC radio in the mid-70s. starring Terrence Alexander. The Super Detective Library had previously adapted a Toff novel in 1955 -- The Toff at Buntlin's (#61).
I saw one cricket match in England and didn't understand it at all.
ReplyDeleteJoin the club, Patti. I'm firmly convinced the British also have no idea what is going on and merely pretend that they do to pull one over on the Yanks. I mean, they don't even do football right.
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