The Woman in the Yard

Strong writing and a relatively fresh setting (the North Carolina coastal town of Wilmington in 1954) overcome some familiar plot elements in this debut mystery. Q.P. Waldeau, known as Kewpie, is a Korean War vet looking for a job in law enforcement. Turned down by big city police departments, he accepts the post of acting sheriff of New Hanover County, where race relations remain strained despite recent advances. When a young black prostitute, Cora Snow, turns up on the local beach trussed and savagely murdered, Kewpie is the only person in the white community who seems to care. It takes the similar killing of another black woman, then of a white woman, before the crimes get major attention. By then, Kewpie and Nina Mendelson, a liberal librarian who left Wilmington in disgust but has returned to look after her dying father, have begun to uncover an upper-class white male conspiracy (which alert readers will have spotted many pages earlier). Kewpie, reluctantly running for reelection (he'd rather work for the state's bureau of investigation), also has to worry about nightmares relating to his time in Korea, the pain of a recently failed relationship, and a threatening hurricane. A stylish writer who creates believable characters moving against a well-detailed, atmospheric background, Miller makes a welcome entrance to the field. Agent, Helen Heller. (Apr.)