Nevertheless he was a doer first, a reader and writer afterwards. Between books he liked to go off to distant countries, meeting new people. When the second War came he managed to get himself into uniform and to land the plum of all jobs for the middle-aged, a Royal Air Force representative on the Deception Planning Committee. (He wrote of his envy at seeing me in uniform, but I was seven years his junior and so, unlike him, had missed the 1914-18 War completely.) Years later I suggested to him that I should propose him for membership of the Savile Club where he would meet his fellow authors in an atmosphere conducive to good conversation and reflection. He took the suggestion coolly and spoke of other plans. Eventually he announced that he had become a member of White's - the club that all the favourite characters of his books would have joined. Like most newly-elected members of a club his first object was to get to the candidates' book when no one was looking and see his own page. He had had thirty-five supporters: not bad for the Streatham-born son of a shopkeeper he could not help boasting.

Few writers can carry conviction with their tongue in their cheek and Wheatley believed in what he was writing while he was writing it. Moreover he himself had many of the Victorian virtues of some of his characters - he had, after all, been born under Queen Victoria, when patriotism and loyalty were more highly regarded than sophistication and cynicism. 'I believe you are rather right-wing, Mr Wheatley,' was Robert Robinson's opening when interviewing him for television; there was a clear hint that he had a Bulldog Drummond incarnate before him, if not an out-and-out fascist. Wheatley was taken aback. He had written about men and women of almost every race, income, creed and period. 'Well, I suppose I'm not left-wing,' was all he could find to answer, but he was irritated and puzzled. You didn't have to be a fascist to know the difference between Good and Evil.

That difference was the theme of most of his books, however kaleidoscopic the details. If the reader of The Satanist has ever read a Dennis Wheatley he will know, from the moment Barney Sullivan says, 'I'll play, Sir', that he is in for a good, if bumpy, ride. Will the forces of Evil triumph or be overcome? Ah, but I must not divulge the plot.

J.G. Links, life-long friend of the author, 1988

1.A dangerous assignment

Colonel Verney's office was on the top floor of a tall building in London. He was sitting at his desk looking at a photograph of the naked body of a man of about thirty. Dark marks on the wrists and ankles showed where they had been tightly bound; the head lolled back and the neck was half severed by a horrible gash from ear to ear. Laying the photograph down, the Colonel said: