Old Money, Murder Add Up to Book Deal

Old money rarely wants to see its name in a newspaper. Memberships in exclusive clubs or seasonal addresses in such places as the tony Hamptons on Long Island and Seal Harbor, Maine, give the well-heeled all the pride of birth and portfolio that they need.

Which is why a first novel snapped up during the Thanksgiving weekend by Warner Books in a deal worth nearly $1 million should be fascinating to read.

“Misfortune” is a murder mystery set among the upper crust in the Hamptons and written by one of their own--Nancy Geary, who used to spend summers at a grand family home in Southampton that once belonged to Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, widow of the publishing magnate. Geary is the daughter of the late John W. Geary II, a wealthy stockbroker, whose second wife (the novelist’s stepmother), Hilary Geary, a writer for the upscale Quest magazine in Manhattan, still owns the Southampton property.

Nancy Geary graduated in 1990 from Harvard Law School and went on to handle cases in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office for several years. She also started to study writing under Joyce Carol Oates (at Radcliffe College) and other luminaries. She spent three years on “Misfortune” before New York literary agent Nicholas Ellison agreed to take her on and showed her manuscript last month to six publishers.

“I chose not to set a closing date for the auction,” Ellison recalled. However, by the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, Warner publisher Jamie Raab had to have the novel. Ellison accepted her preemptive, high-six-figure deal for “Misfortune” and a second novel by Geary that will be set in Newport, R.I.

“At those prices, I couldn’t afford to say no,” Ellison explained.

Publication has yet to be scheduled.

And by the way, Ellison added this week, “Misfortune” and the second book have brought in an additional $280,000 in a deal for the German rights, while an agreement for publication in Italy is pending.

Specifically, “Misfortune’ involves a murder in an old family.

“Nancy’s insights about the family and that world work at a much deeper level,” Ellison said. “This is when it’s fun to be in publishing.”

Geary, who lives on Cape Cod, could not be reached earlier this week. Ellison described her as “totally excited” over what has happened.

Geary’s stepmother is the daughter of Patricia Murray Wood, a chronicler of Long Island’s East End events who has written the Beachcomber column for the Southampton Press for the past 27 years.

Steven Gaines, who wrote the bestselling social history of the Hamptons, “Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons” (Little, Brown), said he believes that the East End has long since transcended itself as a resort area to become a symbol of a lifestyle. “I’m sure there will be a TV series too set out here,” he said from his home. “So it doesn’t surprise me that there would be interest in this new novel.”

Besides “Philistines,” a series of Hamptons mysteries was written in recent years by East Hamptonite James Brady for St. Martin’s Press. In addition, Gaines plucked from his shelf three other Hamptons novels (all now out of print): Leonard Harris’ “The Hamptons,” Gloria Nagy’s “A House in the Hamptons” and Margaret Logan’s “Deathampton Summer.”

Afterwords

“The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine,” written by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, co-writers of the paper’s Friday “Tastings” column, was published recently by Broadway Books. And there’s more where that came from, as another publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced this week that it will launch Wall Street Journal Books as an imprint with an eye to bringing out 12 titles a year, starting in 2001. The plan is to create Journal books in such areas as personal finance, retirement and careers.

The arrangement recalls, at least in theory, Times Books, a Random House entity (once owned by the New York Times) that continues to publish books spawned by the paper, such as the newly revised edition of “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.” . . .

As Stern Publishing nears a big decision later this month on which suitor it will pick to buy the Village Voice and the company’s other free alternative weeklies, Clay Felker, 71, the legendary editor who now heads the Felker Magazine Center at UC Berkeley, ponders a larger question. Writing Monday in the Daily Deal, the new mergers-and-acquisitions newspaper, Felker remembers when he bought the Voice for only about $3 million in 1974 and came to experience the fierce loyalty of its readers over the next three years. He concludes his piece: “As the cost of home delivery, which is crucial for daily newspapers, rises to the point where it threatens profitability, it raises the question: When will the first free daily newspaper appear?”