From Naples to New Orleans, Murder and Mayhem

This month’s column is all about firsts — debut authors, new series beginnings or both. I make it a point to pick up books by new authors whenever I can. Sure, there’s pleasure to be had in discovering someone 10 books into a series and binge-reading them all, but I like embracing promising careers at the ground level, too.

MAY THE WOLF DIE (Penguin Books, 359 pp., paperback, $20), the first book from Elizabeth Heider, a physicist and former U.S. Navy research analyst, bowled me over with its descriptions of Naples — seedy, beautiful, baroque — and the trials and tribulations of its main character, Nikki Serafino. Nikki, a liaison between the local police and the American military, works in a unit called Phoenix Seven where the men, when they aren’t “barraging her with sex jokes,” undermine and condescend to her at every turn. Nikki, “short and compact and muscular with a dynamic, interesting face,” can handle them just fine, thank you very much.

Then, within 24 hours, she stumbles across two bodies. The first, submerged in water, is an American naval officer, and the other has connections to the military base, too. The investigation unfolds with all manner of surprises, and Nikki, to the chagrin of her Neapolitan colleagues, will be the one to solve it.

Delia Pitts begins a new series with TROUBLE IN QUEENSTOWN (Minotaur, 312 pp., $28), which introduces Vandy Myrick. A private detective who’s recently returned to her New Jersey hometown, she’s working in the shadow of her former cop father, who now has dementia, and grieving the death of her daughter, Monica. The sleepy Queenstown that Vandy remembers as a child has changed; it’s now a nest of secrets, teeming with corruption and bigotry.