'To read her is to restore the soul.' THE TIMES 'No one is more graceful and accomplished
than Leon.' WASHINGTON POST 'Leon writes with great literary panache and evocative power
about the world's most beautiful and mysterious city.' SPECTATOR An engaging collection of
stories and essays by the celebrated author of the internationally bestselling Guido Brunetti
series infused with her ever-present and delightful senses of humor and irony In Backstage
Donna reveals her admiration for and inspiration from the great crime novelists Ruth Rendell
and Ross Macdonald examining their approach to storytelling as she dissects her favorite books
of theirs. She expresses her love for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and her appreciation
of Sir Walter Scott's generosity of spirit. And she chronicles the lengths amount of research
she undertakes to be able to present authentically through Guido Brunetti and his colleagues
places and characters far from her own experience: interviewing a diamond dealer in Venice to
open up the world of blood diamonds meeting through back channels a courageous sex worker
and women's rights activist to depict accurately the trafficking of women in Italy. Venice is
central in her memory whether recounting the semi-comic irritation of a noisy elderly neighbor
or the origins of the city's Carnevale. Her teaching career yields memorable tales: helping a
young Black boy in a Newark New Jersey elementary school instructing young Iranian pilots in
English just before the 1979 Iranian Revolution taking her students at a Swiss private high
school to the famous Frank Zappa concert in Montreux interrupted by fire. Throughout she is
as good a storyteller about herself as she is a chronicler of Guido Brunetti's crime
adventures. Readers will be as caught up in her world as she is in his.
