Pierre Quiroule

W W Sayer was working in a bank when he noticed that a number of writers banked more in a week than he earned in a year. Understandably, he decided to channel his energies into writing at that point, re-inventing himself as `Pierre Quiroule`. He wrote stories for numerous periodical, including The Thriller and Detective Weekly. His creations include Detective Inspector Will Shearing and two spies, Granite Grant and Madame Julie. He penned a number of Sexton Blake stories, often introducing his own characters into them. He gave up writing Blake stories in the `30s, though Fleetway continued to reprint his back catalogue for some time in an effort to fill the gap. In correspondence, he expressed an intention of moving into writing screenplays (one of his Blake stories had been made into a film), though it is unclear if this happened.