Crime writer Stuart Goldbarg was born under the sign Hospital Parking, which makes him intellectually adventurous, with a wry sense of humor and an antipathy for horoscopy. If he grew up at all, it was in an airline family in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stuart attended The St. Paul Academy, which was then a tiny, all male, prep school of the military sort. For a time, he sojourned in the hapless Humanities Department (which was soon eliminated through no fault of Stuart’s) of the University of Minnesota. Mr. Goldbarg then steeped himself in History, but it just wasn’t the same.
Stuart’s parents taught him that crime never pays, but criminal defense may, and criminal prosecution does with clockwork regularity. Keeping their wisdom in mind, Stuart worked in criminal law as an investigator and writer of ingenious briefs and appeals. Then his weakness for old stuff seduced him into dealing antiques. When Stuart discovered that he really wasn’t committed to a life of endless dusting, he returned to writing determined to portray several of the amazing criminal characters he had once known. The happy result is his comedic novel of Prohibition and resurrection, A SELF MADE MAN – Bootleggers on Ice.
Regarding his literary antecedents, Messers Walt Kelly, Will Cuppy, Max Shulman, Erskine Caldwell, Nikolai Gogol, and William Shakespeare all influenced Stuart profoundly in his youth, but died coincidently before claiming the credit. Stuart denies culpability for every one of these sad demises, and claims to have an air-tight alibi in each case. Don’t they all?
Stuart spends more than half of his year in St. Paul. However, when the weather turns white, he tends to scamper southward accompanied by his enthusiastically appreciative audience and wife, the ever vivacious and charming Phyllis.
