Dennis Wheatley books for sale - use the search engine right, type Wheatley in the author section.

Dennis Wheatley was born in London in January 1897, the son and grandson of Mayfair wine merchants. From 1908 - 1912 he was a cadet on HMS Worcester, then spent a year in Germany learning about wine making. In September 1914, at the age of seventeen, he received his commission and later fought at Cambrai, St. Quentin and Passchendaele.


Gassed, he was subsequently invalided from the army and entered the family wine business, and following the death of his father in 1926, became its sole owner. During this period he began to write short stories, a number of which were later published or expanded into full-length novels. Following the failure of his first marriage, in 1931 he married Joan Younger.

Wheatley's business was badly affected by the slump of the early thirties and by 1932 he was forced to sell up and came close to bankruptcy. As a diversion from his financial worries and with the encouragement of his wife, Wheatley set about writing a full-length murder mystery that he called 'Three Inquisitive People'. His agent's reader considered the book to be weak, commenting:

"This story shows considerable promise but does not conform to the accepted formula for murder stories. We do not see enough of the murderer, and the construction is poor in that the heroine is not brought in early enough and plays no essential part, and that after the point at which the book should normally be concluded there is a long epilogue tacked on which is unduly loaded with bathos."

However, this book introduced the characters of the Duc de Richleau and his friends who were to become Wheatley's most popular inventions. Whilst 'Three Inquisitive People' was in the hands of his agent he set about writing a second book featuring the same characters, 'The Forbidden Territory', which was immediately snapped up by Hutchinson. This adventure story won immediate acclaim from both the press and public alike. It was reprinted seven times in as many weeks, was translated into many languages and the film rights were bought by Alfred Hitchcock.