George Starbird

Starbird was born on November 26, 1908, in San Jose, California.

He married Carolyn Hall Starbird, whom he met at Stanford, on February 22, 1934.

Starbird was Mayor of San Jose during its peak growth period.

[2] Starbird wrote The New Metropolis, a book on San Jose history published in 1972.

In the 1930s, he published more than a dozen mystery stories in pulp detective magazines such as Black Book Detective and Federal Agent; some stories appeared under his Val Masterson pseudonym.

Starbird's "The World Series Murder" was the cover story in the November 1934 issue of Black Book Detective .