Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett (1886–1974) produced innumerable essays, biographical works, critical studies, and bibliographical pieces on a wide range of authors and subjects, all while managing the “Books Alive” column for the Chicago Tribune for many years. His autobiography, Born in a Bookshop (1965), should be required reading for bibliophiles of all ages.
Few would argue that Starrett’s most outstanding achievements were his writings about Sherlock Holmes, most notably The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933), a comprehensive biography of the great detective, and “The Unique ‘Hamlet,’ ” lauded by Sherlockians for decades as the best pastiche ever written.
He described himself as a Dofob—Eugene Field’s useful word—which is a “damned old fool over books,” and, when a friend called at his home, Starrett’s daughter answered the door and told the visitor that her father was “upstairs, playing with his books.” Upon Starrett’s death, she offered the best tombstone inscription that a bibliophile could hope for: “The Last Bookman.”
Among his many fictional works were numerous mystery short stories and several detective novels, including Murder on “B” Deck (1929), Dead Man Inside (1931), and The End of Mr. Garment (1932). His 1934 short story, “Recipe for Murder,” was expanded to the full-length novel The Great Hotel Murder (1935), which was the basis for the film of the same title and released the same year; it starred Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen.
“The Bloody Crescendo,” often reprinted as “Murder at the Opera,” was originally published in the October 1934 issue of Real Detectives; it was first collected in The Eleventh Juror and Other Crime Classics (Shelburne, Ontario, The Battered Silicon Dispatch Press, 1995).