Another popular creation was the private detective Slim Callaghan who also appeared in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

"[3] He joined the New Party (set up by Sir Oswald Mosley and precursor to the later British Union of Fascists or BUF) in 1931, heading its youth detachment, which protected public meetings.

[4] He was married three times: in 1919 to the stage actress Dorma Leigh (from whom he was divorced in 1931),[5] in 1934 to Kathleen Nora Walter Taberer, and in 1948 to Lauretta Theresa Singer.

Cheyney published a semi-autobiographical volume, Making Crime Pay and after his death at least two biographical essays appeared in posthumous collections.