In Backstage Donna Leon chronicles the 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 - from interviewing a diamond dealer in Venice to open up the world of blood diamonds, to meeting, through back channels, a courageous sex worker and women's rights activist to depict accurately the trafficking of women in Italy. 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.