About this Event
Please join us in Amsterdam for the book launch of local author Elizabeth Heider's novel ! This will be the second book in the Nikki Serafino detective series; the first, , was a New York Times Best Crime Novel of 2024. There will be a talk and a chance to ask questions, and afterwards Elizabeth will sign her book.
About the book:
Some cities feed on secrets. Naples is ravenous.
A peaceful evening mass at the historic Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo is shattered when a young au pair is killed in one of the cathedral’s quiet chapels. The daughter of the US Ambassador sees it happen — but she'll speak only to one person: Nikki Serafino.
Shaken by betrayal in her last high-profile case, Nikki has retreated from the relentless vigilance that once defined her work as liaison between Italian police and the US military. Withdrawn and mistrustful, she works her shifts, cares for her aging family, teaches self-defense classes, and avoids entanglement. But this case threatens her self-imposed invisibility — drawing her into a web of lies and resurfacing old wounds and buried loyalties. The M**der investigation leads Nikki and her friend, Naples officer Valerio Alfieri, into a shadow architecture of power: built to protect the guilty and hide their secrets at any cost.
Can she and Valerio — each carrying dangerous debts — resist the undertow of corruption that swallows truth whole?
Set against the chaos of modern Naples—the city of Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend — where grace and corruption share the same narrow streets, Nikki and Valerio navigate a landscape where even the most principled must confront the cost of survival.
About the author:
Elizabeth Heider is a PhD physicist whose most recent jobs include work for Microsoft’s AI4Science Research Program and the European Space Agency’s Human Spaceflight Program. Her short fiction has earned recognition from the Santa Fe Writer's Project Literary Awards and the New Century Writer Awards, as well as writing and research for military and government agencies where she worked as a scientist. She lived and worked in Naples Italy for several years, deploying as a civilian analyst aboard U.S. and European naval ships. She's based in The Hague.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The American Book Center, 12 Spui, Amsterdam, Netherlands
EUR 0.00
