Mystery Man; Syracuse Native John Berendt's Latest Bestseller Weaves Another Tale of Intrigue

Summary

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"That's something that appealed to me," Berendt admits. "They're unique places. They're unearthly beautiful. A story that takes place in either of those two cities, it's a self-contained environment that is so unusual that it would represent an escape for a reader. You add escape as an element to a book, it's more entertaining, more fun, and you get more involved."

"I was thrilled," Berendt says of that singular bestseller status. But as for the achievement by The City of Falling Angels, he says from a book tour stop in Seattle, "I am absolutely thrilled. I didn't expect it. It'll be No. 1 next week as well. And if that's the only time it spends there that would satisfy me. I don't need to be on that list any longer."

His journalistic instincts no doubt helped him sniff out the real stories in both Savannah and Venice, and contributed to his storytelling abilities. "The journalistic training is partly that," Berendt explains, "but it's also that I'm curious and I respond to hints of a story. I didn't have to sniff out one of the major ones in the book; the burning of the opera house consumed the town, not with fire, but with horror. But when it comes to the smaller stories, when I'm in a location, I'm on duty 24 hours a day, writing, doing research, digging around. I seem to have a sixth sense but I also know I'm on the job, out to dinner, seeing friends, walking around, I'm working."

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Mystery Man; Syracuse Native John Berendt's Latest Bestseller Weaves Another Tale of Intrigue

A full-page, all-color facsimile of the cover of The City of Falling Angels appeared on the back page of the arts section of The New York Times on Sept. 27, the day of the book's publication. Author John Berendt's publisher, Penguin Press, obviously was banking on the fact that his latest work would be as big a blockbuster as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Random House), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

And they obviously know what they're ...

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