subject: Mysterious Deaths of Prodigious Craftsmen [print this page] Although this began as a book review, it's funny that this became more of a writer probe' or writer review. If you consider famous actors and actresses as artists or craftsmen (I don't) and musicians, then I don't have to give examples of early artist burnout due to very early success.
As a 14-year-old, Peter Cheyney persuaded his parents to let him drop out of school so that he could concentrate on writing. His parents probably knew his abilities so he was allowed. At the same year, his first story was published. Now this isn't extraordinary to the literary world since there were so many other prodigy writers.
According to Wikipedia, Cheyney's second successful novel (after two years) and the first Slim Callaghan novel, The Urgent Hangman, was published in 1938. But Collier Books claims it was published in 1933 so that puts doubt on our timeframe. Anyway, the timeframe isn't the main issue here.
The mystery that puzzles me about Cheyney is this: Why did he die at the untimely age of 55?
In his novel They Never Say When, his hero Slim Callaghan and his sergeant Windy Nikolls were depicted as heavy drinkers who drank after waking up. Was Cheyney like that in real-life as almost always the case with Hard Boiled Crime writers? He was even fond of writing again and again ...he began to feel better' whenever Slim drank heavy liquor whatever the time. Was the author Cheyney drunk too that he never noticed he was being carelessly redundant so much so that he seemed like campaigning that being drunk is good.
My suspicion: Cheyney became drunk (figuratively or literally) with success too much too soon which led to burn-out that led to untimely death. Are his parents to blame for their decision? I don't think so. Of course they wouldn't see that the too-early-success of their son would lead to alcocholism and death -IF that was the case.
