{"id":4959,"date":"2026-01-29T01:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T01:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4959"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:59:08","slug":"children-of-the-savage-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4959","title":{"rendered":"Children of the Savage City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cJust when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.&#8221; Those classic lines spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III are a running theme in Heider\u2019s terrific follow-up to her acclaimed debut, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;text-decoration: underline\"><em><a style=\"color: #3366ff;text-decoration: underline\" href=\"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3594\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-cke-saved-href=\"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3594\">May the Wolf Die<\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span> Shaken by the traumatic events of the previous book, Nikki Serafino, a liaison between the Italian police and the U.S. military stationed in Naples, is lying low, teaching a self-defense class, when she\u2019s rescued from a shakedown and mugging by Benedetto De Rosa. He is the right-hand man of Tito Calandra, Nikki\u2019s childhood friend who has become a powerful figure in the city\u2019s underworld. Not wishing to be drawn back into that world, Nikki refuses De Rosa\u2019s request for a favor. But it\u2019s not so easy to disconnect from the corrupt <em>il Sistema<\/em> (the System) of organized crime that is so much a part of Neapolitan life, as Nikki discovers when she agrees to help undercover cop Valerio Alfieri (who has his own issues with the Comorra) investigate a murder. The victim is a young nanny at the historic Chiesa del Ges\u00f9 Nuovo, with the crime witnessed by Valerio\u2019s mother and the daughter of the U.S. ambassador. <strong>Once again, Heider brings the beautiful and complicated city of Naples to life in all its elegant and squalid splendor while telling an exciting, dark, and violent tale with a high body count.<\/strong> Readers will eagerly await Nikki\u2019s next quest for justice.\u2014<em>Willy Williams<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cJust when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.&#8221; Those classic lines spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III are a running theme in Heider\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[163,55,67,56],"class_list":["post-4959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-book-of-the-week","tag-mystery-detective","tag-traditional","tag-women-sleuths"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Children-400x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Children-400x600.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Willy Williams","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=7"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}