Most Prolific Crime Author

[Denis OLeary]

I'm trying to work out who is or was the most prolific author of crime novels. I suspect it was John Creasey who is said to have written 564 books. (Even that number is disputed though). Does anyone know of anyone who can beat that number, counting only crime novels. There are a few others who wrote in other genres. Also, any others from other languages.

[I. J. Parker]

Why? More is never better.

[B.R.Stateham]

I was going to suggest Earle Stanley Gardner. He wrote the Perry Mason novels (about 87 of'em, I think) and using pen names, god knows how many others.

And if you count the number of short stories he wrote and sold, he'd be right up there in the numbers toll.

Even Hunter, aka Ed McBain and other aliases, wrote a number of novels.

But how in hell did Creasey write over 500 novels? That sounds impossible!

[Tom Cooke]

Walter B. Gibson was right up there in the top 5 or 6. He wrote 265 "Shadow Novels" alone. Sometimes producing two a month . He also wrote a young adult series and several tomes on magic.

[Naomi Johnson]

I suspect you're right, that Creasey was the most prolific, but I'm at a loss to understand how he did it. At 564 books, over a period of time from 1932 to 1973, that's an average of better than 13 books a year. Not impossible, we know that many writers of the pulp era could turn out a novel every 3-4 weeks. But none did it for such a long period of time without succumbing to drink/madness. And I don't know of any who claimed to do it all in long hand and revise each work 5-6 times before publication (I got this info from a webpage devoted to Creasey's books.) Presumably the man could have had no life at all other than writing and revising, and yet he married (more than once) and traveled extensively. Maybe it's not impossible but it's so extremely unlikely. I doubt we'll ever see that kind of published output from a writer again.

[minervaK]

13 books a year for 41 years? Longhand, with 5-6 revisions? How is that even *physically* possible?!? Could some of them have been ghost-written?

[Naomi Johnson]

I have no idea. The numbers are staggering, that's for sure. But John's post below about Inoue is even more unreal.

[John Dishon]

I know you're only asking about crime authors, but this is too impressive not to mention. Ryoki Inoue holds the Guiness Record for most prolific novelist with 1,075 novels. Oh yeah, and he's still alive, writing.

http://www.ryoki.com.br/guinnesbookrecords.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoki_inoue

[Geoff McGeachin]

You also might want to take a look at this piece on Australian pulp author Carter Brown (British-born Alan Geoffrey Yates - 1923-1985) with claimed sales of 80 million books worldwide.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5000678/The-mysterious-case...

The bit I especially liked is “Yates . . . was asked if he would be interested in writing a mystery series as 'Peter Carter Brown'; he signed a thirty-year contract which required him to produce two novelettes and one full-length novel a month, and for which he was to receive a guaranteed weekly advance of 30 [pounds sterling].”

For those into pulp titles and cover art:
http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/collection/UQ:3521

[Naomi Johnson]

Holy moly! Isn't that indentured servitude?

[Robin Jarossi]

Has anyone mentioned Georges Simenon? Apparently knocked out 60-80 pages a day, resulting in 200 novels and 150 novellas. He was also a sex addict and somehow squeezed in encounters with 10,000 women between scribbling – though this is likely to be an exaggeration. Writing in French, he was probably unfamiliar with the phrase 'enough already'.

[Bill Crider]

Creasey wrote westerns as well as crime novels. Are those included in that total?

[Naomi Johnson]

There are 30 western titles included in that number.