The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Time of Adam Worth, Master Thief

New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997. No price on DJ, may be book club but is standard size. Hardcover. Very good in very good dust jacket. DJ has slight wear and soiling.. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. xi, [3], 336 p. Frontis. Notes. Index. From Wikipedia: "Adam Worth (1844 8 January 1902) was a German-born American criminal. Scotland Yard Detective Robert Anderson nicknamed him "the Napoleon of the criminal world", and he is referred to as "the Napoleon of Crime. It has been speculated that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used Worth as the prototype for Sherlock Holmes' adversary, Professor Moriarty. In his "Books Alive" column in The Chicago Sunday Tribune (26 Dec. 1943), Vincent Starrett wrote, "Worth was the original of Prof. Moriarty. This information, which isn't generally known, was revealed by Conan Doyle in conversation with Dr. Gray C. Briggs of St. Louis, Dr. Briggs once told me." Biographer Macintyre traces the inspiration for Macavity, the Mystery Cat, in T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to Doyle's rendition of Moriarty. Andrew Lloyd Webber, in turn, based his hit musical, Cats, on T.S. Eliot's work, including the character Macavity, who Demeter & Bombalurina declare, is "the Napoleon of Crime! "