Depending who you talk with Sydney Horler (1888-1954) was historically good, average, or just a plain 'ole hack. He wrote 150 novels - at least - and countless stories and columns. He's known for a variety of spy and crime-fiction series titles like The Ace, Sir Mark Bellamy, Brett Carstairs, Bunny Chipstead, Sir Brian Fordinghame, Gerald Lissendale, Chief Constable Meatyard, Nighthawk, Sebastian Quin, Peter Scarlett, Tiger Standish, Baron Veseloffsky, Paul Vivanti, and Robert Wynnton. He also wrote horror and non-fiction books over the course of his prolific writing career. We offered a podcast episode about his life and literature HERE.Sydney Horler was born in England in 1888. He was educated at Redcliffe and Colston Schools in Bristol and began professional writing in Fleet Street, first on the the Western Daily Press and on Daily Mail chronicling junior reporting assignments like police courts, inquests, and chapel meetings. He served in Air Intelligence in the propaganda section during World War I. After the war he was hired as sub-editor for John 'O London's Weekly before his employment was terminated in 1919.
He became a novelist around 1915 with his first book being a western titled Standish of the Rangeland (1916). He didn't find success with the western and left that genre behind. It was during this time that Horler went to the short story market, used a pseudonym of J.O. Standish, and wrote a serial starring a character named Rex Harley called The Lightning Left. It ran from November 1919 through February 1920 in the pages of The Boys Realm. I wasn't able to obtain any info on this serial or character. I find it interesting that he used the pseudonym of Standish which was his western hero in his first book. He will use that name again with a future spy series. Before the year 1920 Holter had penned an additional 24 short stories for British magazines like Short Stories Illustrated, Chums, and The Grand Magazine.
Throughout Horler's career he is often described as being similar to Edgar Wallace.
His writing career caught fire in 1925 with the crime novel book The Mystery of No. 1. It was published in the US as The Order of the Octopus and ran in the pages of Top-Notch Magazine in 1926. It is the first novel in a series that Horler launched launched starring a British Evil Genius named Paul Vinanti. In The Mystery of No. 1 Vivanti creates a villain supergroup called The Order of the Octopus with contains a Chinese man, a Count of Central Europe, and a woman described as extremely dangers and desired. Vivanti does all of the things that traditional villains do while attempting to build a criminal enterprise. Through the course of the series a British intelligence agent named Peter Foyle, who is also a statesman's nephew, is there to nix Vivanti's plans. The six Vivanti books were published from 1925 through 1945 and were the aforementioned The Mystery of No. 1, then Vivanti, The Worst Man in the World, Vivanti Returns, Lord of Terror, and Virux X. The series gets rave reviews while others seem to think it is just an average pulpy series of novels with cheap thrills. According to my sources the character also appears in at least one of three stories published as The Man Who Shook the Earth in 1933, an anthology of three stories. He also appeared in another of Horler's short story collections called The Screaming Skull, and Other Stories. The series can be described as a mixture of occult and super-science.
Horler liked the hero Sir Brian Fordinghame so he spun off of this series another three books featuring the character - The Murder Mask, High Stakes, and The Prince of Plunder. The four-book Brian Fordinghame series altogether features those books plus False-Face. Technically, this series can be labeled as published between 1913 and 1932.
Another character debuted in 1927 - Bunny Chipstead. He's a freelance British Secret Service agent which means he can choose which assignments he wants plus he can work both British and American assignments. There were four of these books running from 1927 through 1940 - In the Dark, Chipstead of the Lone Hand, The Secret Agent, and The Enemy within the Gates.
Next was the Sebastian Quin series (not to be confused with popular author Seabury Quinn). Now Sebastian Quin appeared in three stories in 1925-1930. He is described as an occult detective, an enthusiast of the bizarre who has devoted his life to the study of crime in its most exotic and weird manifestations. He can Speak Chinese and another 17 foreign languages. What is interesting about him is that he isn't necessarily looking to stop a crime. He wants to learn what prompted the outrage to commit the crime. His assistant is a man named Martin Huish. The three story appearances exist but this character was the star of his own two-book series. The first novel was The Evil Messenger from 1938, followed by Fear Walked Behind in 1942. There is also a short story collection called The House in Greek Street that has a Sebastian Quin story reprinted from the magazines.
Switching to a different series, Horler did start one more series in 1928 that was a tremendous success that launched a small empire for him.
Also in 1931 was a two-book series starring Brett Carstairs. He was in The Man Who Walked with Death and The Spy. He's a British secret agent that portrays a wealthy upperclassman to disguise his secret missions against the Soviets.
Again, just like the 1920s, Holter is filling holes between his series installments all through the 1930s. Stand-alone books in the 1930s add up to 35-38 books in addition to all of those series installments. By this point Horler has sold over 2 million books. Between the years 1925 and 1953 Horley never published fewer than three books of fiction in any year. Three books a year was actually a slow year for him, he only sank to that level in 1940 due to the Blitz in England during WWII. In 1931 he produced 7 novels, a book of short stories, and in 1951 he wrote 10 novels.
He had been quoted as saying he dictated 25,000 words which is about 100 pages every single week. Horler was a prolific author and he sold well through the 1920s, 1930s, and even into the 1940s. His publishers would include "Horler for Excitement" on his books as the marketing slogan.
Beginning in 1941 there was The Ace series starring a British secret agent named Justin March working for an organization named Y.2. There were three books total with Enter the Ace in 1941, Hell's Brew in 1952, and The Dark Night in 1953. According to his 1934 autobiographical book London's Underworld, Holter says that in the prime of his career he received a phone call from The Star asking him to briefly switch from a full-time novelist to a part-time journalist. The assignment was to submerge himself into the underworld for a full month. Here is what they told him, according to Horler's book:
"We want you to meet the people who live in, and practice their crafts through, the Underworld. We want you to talk to them and get their viewpoint, describe their habits, characteristics, their methods of working - in short - to deliver us a clear and composite picture of this section of humanity which we know actually does exist but of which 99 persons out of every hundred are in complete ignorance. This gentleman, indicating He Who Had Remained Nameless, will act as a guide to begin with. After that it will be up to you."
I haven't read this book but I looked at the chapter list at the beginning of the book and you can kind of see where the author spent time at. He wined, dined, interviewed, traveled with, and entertained thieves, prostitutes, white slavers, blackmailers, the real soho, dope traffickers, and police on the take. In flipping through the book it is all done in a humorous way.
Horler also wrote screenplays as well. There are four films listed on IMDB with his name attached to them.
Horler's political views have often come under fire. He often expressed contempt in his writing of non-British peoples. Malcolm Turnbull noted that Horler's novels regularly depict Jews as criminals. Horler's book Nighthawk Mops Up has a Jewish villain who collaborates with the Nazis. Odd. Horler was outspoken and said Americans were absurd, Italians smelly, French dishonest, and the Swiss had wooden faces.
Horler had an ongoing feud or squabble with British crime-fiction writer Dorothy L. Sayers, who immensely disliked his work. The same can be said for Scottish writer Compton MacKenzie.
Horler suffered a stroke in August of 1954. He then entered Bournemouth nursing home and would pass away on October 27th at age 66.
To give you an idea how abrasive Horler was, when he died the Daily Express announced his death by stating "HORLER KILLED EVERY WAY THERE IS!"
You can get Sydney Horler books HERE.
