The Accident (46 page)

Love,

I

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
his book passed through a great many hands on its way from my keyboard to your bedside table, and they all played an important role. The book-publishing world is populated with dedicated, knowledgeable, and creative people who work very hard, usually for very little pay, and almost always for absolutely no recognition whatsoever. So here’s some …

The manuscript’s first editor was literary agent David Gernert, with the assistance of Anna Worrall and Ellen Goodson at the Gernert Company in New York, whose rights team of Rebecca Gardner and Will Roberts were responsible for securing foreign publication deals; Sylvie Rabineau, in Los Angeles, handled the even more foreign business of film rights. Kim Carpenter, also in California, kept me honest.

A few drafts later,
The Accident
made its way to Crown publisher Molly Stern and editors Zachary Wagman and Meagan Stacey, with the assistance of Jesse Aylen and Sarah Bedingfield and Miriam Chotiner-Gardner. And also to the desks of Faber & Faber editor Angus Cargill and publisher Hannah Griffiths in London. All these people helped make the book better, and most of them were also kind enough to sit through lunch with me.

The typescript was then copyedited by Mary Anne Stewart and the
galleys proofread by Susan Groarke and Scott Auerbach, in a process managed by production editor Terry Deal. These people helped remove mistakes and smooth the rough edges and avert disasters.

Then the text was turned into a book by interior designer Elina Nudelman under interiors director Elizabeth Rendfleisch; and cover designer Chris Brand under design director Marysarah Quinn; and production manager Luisa Francavilla, in a process overseen by Derek Gullino, Linnea Knollmueller, Amy Boorstein, Rachel Meier, and Sally Franklin, in a pipeline that’s always clogged with a hundred-plus new books.

Speaking of a large quantity of new books: there are
hundreds of thousands
of them published every year. The task of launching any one into this marketplace is herculean. If for some reason you’ve picked up
The Accident
, that’s probably because of Annsley Rosner, Sarah Breivogel, and Carisa Hays in publicity; Donna Passannante, Jay Sones, and Kayleigh George in marketing; Linda Kaplan and Courtney Snyder in rights; or paperback publisher Sheila O’Shea.

This whole operation took place at an outfit called the Crown Publishing Group, which is prevented from falling apart by president and publisher Maya Mavjee, along with David Drake and Jill Flaxman, as well as Kevin Tobin and Katie Ziga in finance. Crown itself is a division of Penguin Random House, where
The Accident
benefited from the work of Megan Thomas, Dorothy Boyajy, and David Sanford in contracts; Matthew Martin and Kathy Trager in legal; Amanda D’Acierno, Sue Daulton, Amy Metsch, and Dan Zitt in audio; plus Annette Danek and the whole warehouse and customer service team, which consists of
hundreds
of people; plus James O’Malley at 1745, who never forgot me, even when I disappear for years at a time.

And then there’s the sales department. In a business with tens of thousands of producers creating hundreds of thousands of distinct new products every year for an uncountable number of distributors and retailers, the sales process is not exactly simple. And all these products are full-length
books
, not T-shirts or cell phones or snack bars; you can’t
assess—or sell—them in a glance or a bite. If you bought the Crown edition of
The Accident
, first someone at Random House needed to have sold it, and those people included John Adams, Andy Augusto, Patty Berg, Pam Brown, Eric Buscher, Cathy Calvert, Morgan Carattini, Candice Chaplin, Tom Cox, Chris Dufault, Christine Edwards, Michael Gentile, Amiee Gibbs, David Glenn, KJ Grow, John Hastie, Toni Hetzel, Cheryl Kelly, Cyrus Kheradi, Nan Khilall, Michael Kindness, Ann Kingman, Beth Koehler, Ron Koltnow, Dan Kosack, Ceneta Lee-Williams, Jerry Lex, Wade Lucas, Shauna Masi, Lisa McCormack, Annette Trial O’Neil, David Phethean, Bridget Piekarz, Judy Pohlhaus, Anke Reichelt, Andrew Rein, Jennifer Ridgway, David Romine, Sasha Sadikot, Kim Shannon, Ron Shoop, Scott Smith, Michele Sulka, David Underwood, Jaci Updike, Sherry Virtz, Valerie Walley, Jeff Weber, and Lori Zook.

All these people, and many more whom I’m sure I’ve overlooked (sorry!), earn their livings transforming manuscripts into books, and launching books like mine into the world. I thank them all sincerely and immensely.

Also by Chris Pavone

“Thoroughly captivating.” —
New York Times Book Review

“Bombshell-a-minute.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Ingenious.” —
Washington Times

“Impossible to put down.” —
Associated Press

Available wherever books are sold