Jamison Stoltz: Controlling the Urge to Visit Venice Often

Jamison Stoltz is a senior editor at Grove/Atlantic. He edits nonfiction--recent titles include Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America by Jonathan Gill and Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson--and mysteries and thrillers, including Mike Lawson's Joe DeMarco series and the novels of Mark Haskell Smith. Before joining Grove/Atlantic, he worked at William Morris in London and New York.

How did Donna Leon come to be published by Grove/Atlantic?

Donna Leon was first published in the U.S. by HarperCollins. For whatever reason, after a number of books, they stopped publishing her, though she kept writing them to great success around the world. She just didn't have an American publisher, and bookstores here were resorting to importing expensive British paperbacks--and selling them well, I believe. Jump forward a few years and Morgan Entrekin, my boss and the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, was having dinner in London when he ran into Ravi Mirchandani, an editor he knew at Heinemann. Ravi happened to be at dinner with his author Donna Leon. Morgan and Donna met, and knowing that he'd been a lifelong reader of mysteries and thrillers, Ravi sent a number of the Brunetti books with Morgan on his vacation in Greece. From what I've heard, he couldn't put them down and a wooing ensued, with Donna eventually won over in large part due to the quality of our list. We published Uniform Justice in 2003 as an Atlantic Monthly Press hardcover, and have done every book since then. With the exception of the first novel, Death at La Fenice, which is still with HarperCollins, we've published all the paperbacks through a partnership with Penguin.

What is it like working with a writer who has a great deal of experience in her field, not to mention a highly successful track record with the earlier mysteries in this particular series?

Drawing Conclusions was the sixth Brunetti title I've handled, and as with the previous books, about a year in advance of publication the manuscript landed in my inbox from Venice and I dove right in. To call it work is perhaps overstating the effort required; Donna is a pro and what arrives is always in excellent shape. She is a delight to work with.

Are there any specific challenges for you in editing the books, other than controlling your urge to make frequent trips to Venice to fact check details of the locale?

There's that, for sure. A few years ago I visited Venice and stayed in the Cannaregio pallazina of one of Donna's friends. My wife and I made it a point to track down Brunetti's apartment building and have a drink in one of his haunts.

Aside from keeping track of a host of little details from book to book, such as where Signorina Elettra buys flowers for the Questura, the hardest thing might be settling on a final cover design. We came up with at least 30 different ones for Drawing Conclusions, working up until the last minute. But in the end it's worth it, and I'm thrilled with the jacket. It's lush, a little somber, and emotionally powerful, like the book.

Donna Leon is adept at balancing details of police work, the atmospherics of daily life in Venice and complex human relationships with intelligence, wit and drama. At the same time that you encourage her to be true to her artful balance among the police, Venice and personal relationships, what kinds of editorial suggestions do you make?

With Donna's books I tend to focus on little, but essential, details. In the first draft of Drawing Conclusions, for example, there was a clue--a notebook with obliterated writing--which I felt was too strong a hint, and it didn't make it into the final version. Earlier, Brunetti is at dinner with Vice-Questore Patta and the loathsome Lieutenant Scarpa, which I felt needed explanation, and he is given a reprieve by a call to his telefonino, a device I know he doesn't like. It ended up turning into a nice detail: Brunetti brings the phone so that his wife, Paola, can call with a fake emergency. Also, crime fiction readers are incredibly sharp; if we mix up the number of apartments in a building or something like that, someone will catch it. So I try to do it first.

With the Guido Brunetti mysteries, Donna Leon presents characters who are witty, sophisticated and strongly opinionated. Do you recall a particular exchange where her characters made you laugh out loud?

Brunetti's relationship with Paola is always good for a few laughs. In this book, there's a great exchange around Champagne given to her by one of her students. One of my favorite moments came at my own expense. Early in About Face there's a dinner party at Palazzo Falier, the home of Brunetti's in-laws. I made a comment to Donna regarding the seating arrangement, which resulted in this in the book:

"Someone more familiar with the etiquette of seating at dinner might have been shocked at the proximity of wives to their husbands: it is to be hoped that their sensibilities would have been calmed by the fact that the Conte and Contessa faced one another from the ends of the rectangular table."

At Grove/Atlantic, how does the process of getting everyone behind a title like Drawing Conclusions work? How do you sell the marketing and publicity departments and prepare them to make the larger world aware of its appeal?

A new book from Donna Leon is about the easiest thing to pitch to our sales reps, since Grove/Atlantic has been publishing her for nearly a decade and her readership keeps growing. Plus, after all this time, many of us have strong personal relationships with her. When she tours the U.S., our publicity director, associate publisher and I will each take a turn on tour with her. Last time I took her to Miami, where she had a great standing-room-only event at Books & Books.

What particular sections or scenes from the novel will grab readers and serve to stimulate spirited discussions at the many book clubs that regularly choose Guido Brunetti mysteries for their meetings?

Donna has said she's less interested in the "who" than the "why," and I think this is a reason book clubs--and people who don't often choose crime fiction--gravitate to her work. Without giving away too much, there's a moving story of love and loss in Drawing Conclusions, a question of what we think we need to be happy and what we will do to get it.--John McFarland