Who is "Donna Leon"?

A few months ago I thought I'd rewrite what I thought was a particularly poor and historically empty Wikipedia biography of an American expatriate woman who is the author of the Commissario Guido Brunetti series of crime fiction mystery novels.

When I tried to look into that author's early history and education I came up empty handed, came up against a blank wall. Not only a blank wall, but a determined resistance to anyone finding out more about that author's past. Like a character in one of her mystery novels, I found the woman "Donna Leon" to really be a 'mystery woman' in more ways than one.

For example, many sources state that "Donna Leon" was born in 1942 in Montclair, New Jersey ... but there are three different dates published for the month/day of her birth: September 28th, September 29th, and February 28th.

And that's just to start.

She had been living and working as an English teacher in northern Italy since 1983. Then in 1990 or 1991 she started writing the first of what eventually became a very successful (financially) series of crime fiction novels set in what was at that time her adopted hometown of Venice, Italy.

As a writer, the author religiously followed the writers creed, "to be successful, write only what you know about"; the author's novels are one-third travelogue of Venice, one-third Italian state police procedure, and one-third the author's social commentary. The formula, the mix, was good; Venice-lovers in England and the United States bought up the author's English-language books, while Venice-lovers in Germany (especially Germany), Spain, Japan and a host of other countries have had to settle for translations of the author's novels.

But nothing much at all is known of the author's past. That is, her past before the publication of the first in her series of crime fiction novels, Death at La Fenice (1991 in Japan, 1992 elsewhere). She reveals only fragments of her pre-Death at La Fenice past. Very small bits and pieces written by her publishers. Very small bits and pieces she's told to her interviewers. Very small bits and pieces revealed in YouTube videos.

And that's it. A very, very private life if you will, and certainly a mystery in and of itself. All those little bits and pieces are all anyone knows about "Donna Leon's" public and private lives.

There's no information at all about who her parents are, or were; not their names of her mother and father, what her mother's and father's occupations were. Considering that "Donna Leon" claims she was born during that fearful, post-Pearl Harbor first year of World War II, what were her mother and father doing back then? What were they doing during the rest of WWII? Were they even U.S. citizens when the war broke out? Who knows? "Donna Leon" isn't telling.

There's no information about where she was brought up, and went to school. It's not terribly important, but still ... it could be, like if she attended one of those exclusive eastern U.S. private schools, for example?

There's no information about her education; when, where, and if she went to college or university, and if so, how far she got before she quit? Her last employer says she wrote on her application that she had been in a doctorate program, had completed all the required coursework but had not submitted a dissertation. But again, no indication of dates or institutions. Why not? What's so secret about where and when you went to college, and what degree-level you attained?

So now she doesn't live in Venice any longer. And, "ka-ching ka-ching", she doesn't need to teach English any longer. That continual and growing, 'ka-chinging' of her novel sales has made it possible for her to get out of tourist-mobbed Venice, buy a nice little villa north of Venice in the foothills of the Dolomite mountains, and keep herself busy with her oldest passion, Opera.

So all that's publically known about this woman, this financially successful author, is just little bits and pieces of her past history, her pre-Death at La Fenice history that really can't be substantiated and validated.

In the next couple of posts I'll start putting together the bits and pieces of what's known of "Donna Leon's" pre-history, checking public information sources to determine (a)when and where "Donna Leon" attended college or university, and what degrees she obtained. (What can be said with reasonable certainty is the, contrary to some reports, "Donna Leon" has not been granted a doctorate in eighteenth-century English authors.), and then (b) who her employers were between 1967 and 1983.

An easy start? Maybe ...

I think there probably are, must be some readers who might know, or know of, or think they know something about the real "Donna Leon". Maybe they can use this blog to shed a little more light on this 'mystery woman' who calls herself "Donna Leon".

Who is "Donna Leon"?

"Donna Leon" is the name used by an award-winning American novelist living in Italy who has received widespread international acclaim for her series of detective stories featuring her main character, Commissario Guido Brunetti, a mid-level detective in the police department of the beautiful and romantic city of Venice, Italy

Beginning with her first novel published in 1992 (Death at La Fenice , in English), "Donna Leon" has had nineteen of her Commissario Guido Brunetti novels, almost all of them published at the rate of one novel a year.

So why are there quote marks around her name?

Because so little is known about the life, times, and background of "Donna Leon" before her first book, Death at La Fenice, was published in 1992.

That first novel in the series, Death at La Fenice (1991, in Japanese) was published after she had entered and won the 1991 annual suspense novel competition sponsored by the Japanese liquor distiller Suntory. The award for winning the competition was a two-book publishing contract with a Japanese publishing company. Death at La Fenice was published in English in 1992, followed by publication of Death in a Strange Country in 1993, which was also printed in Japanese.

Virtually everything about the author's life before Death at La Fenice is a closed book. She doesn't talk about it, doesn't like to talk about it, doesn't want to talk about it. When and where did she go to college? To university? Did she or didn't she get a Ph.D in English literature? If she did, where and when did she get it? Where did she grow up, where did she go to high school? Who are her parents, and what did they do? Who did she work for, and where, after she left home? Did she do any writing, fiction or otherwise, and if so, did she submit any of her manuscripts to publishers before Death at La Fenice?

All of those questions are standard biography questions. Publishers and book sellers print brief bios of their authors, but the only thing that her publishers and booksellers can print about her life is what she tells them.

And that isn't very much.

So, the early life of mystery writer "Donna Leon" is in itself a mystery, an enigma. If, as it is said, people have three lives -- their public life, their private life, and their secret life, then "Donna Leon"'s public life really begins a little before Death at La Fenice (1991-1992). Her private life before that, between 1942 to 1991, is virtually unknown.

It is with the author's secret life, the strange and utter secrecy about when and where she received her education, the accompanying secrecy about her qualifications to teach English courses at an American university overseas, that's most puzzling.

But why such bizarre secrecy?

Why is it so important to her not to reveal where and when she went to college? How could any secret be so embarassing, so personally humiliating, so liable to subject her to ridicule as telling people where and when you went to college, to university? Perhaps something had happened to the author in the process of obtaining an undergraduate and graduate degrees, some kind of rejection, some lack of acceptance or whatever by those institutions, that caused her to want to repudiate, to 'erase' from her memory as it were, any reminder whatsoever of the institutions she attended?

And what else is she hiding?

Well, for one thing, why her absolute insistance that none of her Brunetti-series novels are to be translated and published in Italian?

Why??

Could it be that she's given some of her novels' less likeable characters features and characteristices that are a bit too much like real-life people in Venice, or are composites of real-life people in Venice? I mean, she admits to gleefully 'killing off' a central character, one believed to be drawn from real life, in her first novel, Death at La Fenice, the real life character being at one time in his musical career a member of WWII Germany's Nazi party, by doing in her novel what is commonly called "character assassination" in literary circles. So, if it was done in her very successful first novel, then what would prevent her from doing the same thing in her subsequent novels?

And if so, a good way to prevent Donna Leon's Venetian targets of character assassination from identifying themselves (or be identified by those that perhaps think they know who those characters are) is to forbid translation and publication of her novels in a language that her Venetian targets speak, read, and thoroughly understand -- Italian.

Well, these kinds of questions are what this blog is all about. I'm seriously considering rewriting an existing Wikipedia biography of Donna Leon; no revised biography can be complete without answers to these (and other) questions about Donna Leon's life.

And that's why I've chosen this Google blogspot's address to be "aboutdonnaleon".


Ken Kellogg-Smith