April Smith - Author of FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Series of Thrillers

PROLOGUE: MONTE SAN STEFANO, ITALY

     The Chef drove easily in the dark, anticipating the turns with pleasure, having been in the woods often enough to know the road by heart. The playlist he'd made of his personal favorites was a mix of Italian pop music with interludes of a folksy mandolin.  The feel was upbeat. He drove a well-kept silver van with the company name in red lettering on the side and plenty of room in back.  The entwined rosaries hanging from the rear view mirror jostled softly, and the black and white Australian sheep dog beside him kept an alert watch through the windshield.  It was a cozy drive for Il Capocuóco  -- the Head Chef -- known for his abilities to mix chemicals like a master. 

     When they passed the barn and turned onto the dirt track, the dog stood up in anticipation.  When the Chef got out and unlocked the gate, the dog followed and then jumped back into the front seat to wait.  The Chef paused to appreciate the stars.  It was silent except for the idling engine.  Exhaust spoiled the scent of juniper.
 
      They continued through dense trees until the headlights picked up a half-burned abandoned house and behind it, a pre-fab shack where sacks of lye were stored.  The Chef's day job was delivering chemicals along a busy route of Tuscan farms. He still wore the dirty jumpsuit that was his uniform. The charred ruins of the old house came closer into view.  The headlights cut out, the door opened, and the dog scrambled down into the pine mulch.   


    A steel vat stood on a platform high off the ground.  The odd hiker would have thought it a water tower.  Underneath the vat was a row of burners, connected to a tank of propane.  The Chef lit the gas fire and waited for the chemicals inside the vat to heat.  


     For the past hour he had been putting off his hunger, eager to get to the site. Now he unwrapped a stick of salami sopressata, sliced off the tip with a sharp folding knife, and methodically scored and peeled the outer casing, cutting off slivers of meat, which he shared with the dog. The smell of garlic made him even more ravenous, and he went through the potato crisps, orange soda, and packaged cream puffs as well.


   The Chef sat behind the wheel with both doors open to the night, counting his money by the dashboard glow, until his pleasantly full belly contracted with venom.  Once again, the pézzo di merda who delivered his pay had skimmed 10 percent off the top, and there was nothing he could do about it.  They must consider him an idiot, he thought with rage, and threw the empty soda bottle into the bush. The dog's tail went up and he continued to bark at nothing, while the Chef stalked around the back of the van, and lugged out a large plastic bin.  This time it was the body of a woman, and it was light.  Facile.  Easy.  He slipped on goggles and gloves.  When the temperature was right it would not take long for the corpse to dissolve in la minéstra, the soup.  


     The woman, Lucia Vincenzo, beautiful, a player both in money laundering and drug dealing, had vanished on a trip to the local market. Her car was left in the parking lot containing bags of groceries and no evidence of struggle.  In the language of the mafias, a murder where the body is never found is called lupera bianca or white shotgun. To disappear with no one knowing how they killed you is a warning to the enemy meant to echo in the most lasting way -- in the stark silence of the imagination.      


     The Chef dragged the bin up the ramp that led to the vat.  He drew off the tarp and backed away as toxic vapors rose from la minéstra.  No one appreciated the quality of his work.  How smooth, complete, undetectable. 

                                                                                                   ***

Booklist Online — Starred Review

A white shotgun, or lupara bianca in the organized-crime parlance of southern Italy, is a murder for which the body is never found. The open-endedness of the disappearance is intended to haunt and torture those left behind. This is an apt metaphor for the latest Ana Grey series entry, in which the FBI special agent is asked repeatedly to venture into situations of great ambiguity, in which violence is suddenly unleashed. Ana is a credible, fascinating heroine, both worldly and rueful about her unsettled life (her current lover is a hired gun who often leaves at the drop of a cell-phone message). This time out, Ana is in London, where she witnesses a harrowing drive-by shooting outside a restaurant, goes into disaster-recovery mode, and almost immediately is sent to Sienna to preserve her cover. The larger reason for this scenario is that Grey’s half sister, whom she has never met, has married into the network of Italian Mafias and provides an excellent excuse for Grey to infiltrate. Much of the action involves Sienna itself, including the annual running of the horses (the Palio) in the main piazza and the ways medieval family rivalries still persist. Tight suspense and fascinating background.

— Connie Fletcher

The Big Thrill

April Smith has the kind of career most authors genuinely dream about.  Her fourth novel featuring FBI Special Agent Ana Grey will be published in June.  WHITE SHOTGUN takes Grey to Italy, where she finds herself called upon to investigate a half sister she never knew she had and her mafia-connected husband.  Connecting with her family under false pretenses becomes more than complicated when her nephew is stabbed and her sister goes missing.  Now Ana must face an almost impossible choice between duty and family…

Four critically acclaimed novels, published by Knopf, edited by the famed Sonny Mehta, and a deal to adapt one of her own novels for television could make Smith the perfect protagonist of her own thriller.  Of course, having many friends in the FBI and having participated in training scenarios at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, could make her a bit of a hard target.

But those things are also what make her writing so real.  “I make it a priority for my books to be accurate.  They are read several times by different agents to make sure of the accuracy,” says Smith, speaking with great appreciation for the real agents who inspired her fictional characters.  “They are bright, educated people, with a sense of humor.  They take care of people.  The political environment we see in the paper is very different from the day-to-day.  I admire them.”

But writing an effective thriller takes far more than good contacts in law enforcement.  Smith began working on her first novel in earnest during the 1988 television writers’ strike.  A television writer on shows such as LOU GRANT, CAGNEY & LACEY, and CHICAGO HOPE, she spent five years crafting her first novel.  Her TV agents at CAA put her in touch with her book agent, Molly Friedrich, who sold the novel in a matter of days.  But Smith didn’t take the first offer, which came tied to unacceptable changes to the story.  But when she spoke with Sonny Mehta at Knopf, she knew immediately that he was the editor with whom she wanted to work.

Smith doesn’t bang out a book every year.  Instead, each book is carefully crafted with a focus on the core relationships between her characters.  “It’s these relationships that are fundamental to the core of the thriller.  If a writer learns to develop these relationships, their thrillers will have the depth that draws readers, because readers want to come away having had an emotional experience, not just a diversion.  I think that’s why they read.”

She encourages would-be thriller writers to “study the masters” and speaks of veteran thriller writer Frederick Forsyth with admiration, having recently read DAY OF THE JACKAL and DOGS OF WAR.  “His plotting is very precise and logical and realistic and from that you can structure a believable story.  He really understands core relationships.  He sets up the motivations and relationships between the good guy and the bad guy and builds on that and expanding on that.”

Smith plans to attend ThrillerFest and says she’s looking forward to discussing the “nitty-gritty” of thriller writing with her fellow authors.

                        — Andrew Zack

Robert Crais Reviews White Shotgun

In the language of the mafias, a murder where the body is never found is called lupara bianca, or white shotgun. To disappear with no one knowing how they killed you is a terrible warning, as it haunts the souls of those left behind. April Smith’s White Shotgun will haunt you.

Let’s cut to the chase: I love Smith’s work. She is one of the finest, smartest, most gifted writers working in crime fiction today, and White Shotgun is her best novel since the justifiably celebrated North of Montana, the novel that introduced FBI Special Agent Ana Gray. White Shotgun is an edgy, realistic, personal trip down the rabbit hole of an FBI undercover operation into one of the ‘mafias.’ Note the plural. This ain’t your daddy’s mafia. The new mafia is called the mafias. Forget Sonny Corleone, what you think you know from The Godfather, and rehashed Sopranos tropes straight outta Jersey--what you will read here in Smith’s thoroughly researched and realistically portrayed thriller is the way its done, now, today, straight outta Italy.

This is the real deal.

These days, the ‘Ndrangheta clan of the mafias occupy “the sh-t-caked bottom of Italy’s boot, a multibillion-dollar crime syndicate made up a hundred tribal families with blood ties, six thousand strong, holed up in remote mountain villages,” exactly like the Taliban operates in Afghanistan. Cracking the scores of families that operate out of inaccessible fortress towns, from where they run heroin from the poppy fields of Afghanistan (feeding cash to Taliban warriors) to the port of Naples, and eventually to my home town, and yours, here in the U.S. of A., is of prime concern to the FBI--and Special Agent Ana Gray.

Gray has little choice. It turns out Nicoli Nicosa, a new breed mafia associate who operates as a coffee magnate, is a primary person of interest for the FBI. When it becomes known that Nicosa’s wife, Cecilia, is a half-sister Ana never knew existed, and has reached out to Ana for an unknown reason, the FBI brass force Gray into a deep-cover op to gather intelligence. But when Cecilia is kidnapped, Ana finds that a rekindled sense of family inspires her to step outside the FBI and risk her career by working “off the books” with her sister’s mobster husband to bring Cecilia home. Enlisting the help of her ex-Delta-Force boyfriend, Sterling McCord, and a tactical force of recruited mercenaries, Ana hangs her life and career over the edge to recover her sister, dead or alive.

Smith renders the southern Italian setting with such honesty and care you will feel the touch of ancient stone and smell espresso as you read. Similarly, Ana Gray is evoked with such authenticity and realism you can feel her body heat.

This is Smith, the writer, showing us how it’s done.

This is Smith’s talent and skill at work (and the work is difficult, believe me), creating not only a balls-to-the-wall crime thriller, but a full-blown novel of depth and richness (and, for the action prone among you, both the best sniper scene and best rendition of a hostage-recovery assault I’ve read, period, bar none.)

But, ultimately, after the smoke clears and the bodies are counted, April Smith has given us more.

White Shotgun is a novel about redemption and growth, and the healing power of love and acceptance, and the acceptance of love. Hard won lessons to learn, but worth learning.

Robert Taub

I have been to Siena numerous times, but never with F.B.I. agent Ana Grey. In the past when I've visited this beautiful city I've been nothing more than a naïve tourist, but April Smith's book, White Shotgun, showed me people, places and things in an exciting and far more interesting Siena.

While on vacation status in London with boyfriend Sterling McCord, Grey is witness to a brutal shootout. Before she can wipe off the debris, Grey is being sent by the bureau to Italy to gather intel on the husband of her recently discovered half sister, Cecilia Nicosa. Everything in Ana Grey's world is deep and complex -- from friends, family and lovers to the bars she visits and we are continually exposed to both the beauty and ugliness of Siena and its people.

April Smith's characters are superbly crafted and her research is spot on. She introduces us to a mafia that no doubt exists and I hope to never encounter. The leader is known as "The Puppet," and I'm not going to reveal why, but I assure you it has nothing to do with weakness.

I spent a few years of my life reading and reviewing crime fiction on a weekly basis and I love the genre. I always enjoy a well-written story about a tough cop or P.I., but Ana Grey is much more. She's a complex, believable and ultimately far more compelling character than usually found in even the best thrillers and crime novels. As a narrator, Grey shares her love life, professional expertise, sense of smell and wry wit with her readers, who she steadily draws in to a realistic and desperate world.

This is Smith's fourth (and definitely the best) book in the Ana Grey series and my only grievance is that I wish she wrote more frequently.

Pittsburg Tribune

The most famous horse races in the world — the Kentucky Derby, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in France, the Epsom Derby in England — have nothing on Il Palio.

Twice each summer, in Siena, Italy, 60,000 spectators gather at the Piazza del Campo to watch 10 jockeys riding bareback, guiding horses around one of the most dangerous courses in the world. The turns are hairpin tight, and fans literally spill over onto the temporary dirt track in the Il Palio's brief 90 seconds.

The race hasn't changed much in 700 years.

"It's freaking dangerous," says Los Angeles-based writer April Smith, "and that's part of the thrill, I guess, kind of like the running of the bulls (in Pamplona, Spain). These horses go skidding around these corners, the jockeys fly off and people are literally fainting, having asthma attacks, and God knows what the purse snatching situation is. It's raw, and that's what so appealing about it. It's not commercialized. It's really gut-level Renaissance pageantry in this tiny town where it's like a religion. Everyone takes it dead serious."

Smith uses Il Palio as a backdrop in her new novel, "White Shotgun." Featuring FBI special agent Ana Grey, it's only the fourth book in the series that started in 1994 with "North of Montana."

"They're very complicated and deep," Smith says of her novels. "You have to integrate so much. It's almost a physical process."

Smith became aware of Il Palio while visiting her son, Benjamin, when he was studying in Italy. It seemed to be the perfect setting for a story, but there was a huge logistical problem: How to plausibly get an FBI agent based in Los Angeles to a small town in Italy.

Answer: Introduce a long-lost sister.

In previous books, Smith had sketched in Grey's family background -- an absent father from El Salvador, a mother who died when Ana was a little girl, an abusive grandfather -- and intimated there was more. Enter Cecilia, married to Nicola Nicosa, who owns the Italian equivalent of a Starbucks coffee empire. Through the FBI, she seeks Ana, and the bureau is game to put them together because Nicosa is suspected of having ties to an organized crime network that operates in the United States.

"To make that connection with (Ana's) half-sister believable took a lot of work and layering," Smith says.

That wasn't Smith's only hurdle. In order to understand her characters better, Smith learned to speak Italian. She visited the FBI legat in Rome and went to Il Palio. Short in stature, Smith had to arrive six hours before the race started to ensure a good vantage point.

She also had to immerse herself in the nebulous, but tangible, webs of organized crime. What she found was astounding: a shadow economy that is estimated to be worth $128 billion.

"There's an inter-relationship between all the global criminal networks of which the Italian mafias are just one," Smith says, "and how that operates underneath what we think is the normal world. They take myriad forms, these networks, to look legit. But the point is, it affects politics, business manufacturing, immigration, everything. That's why it's a priority for the FBI."

In "White Shotgun" (the Italian term is lupera bianca, which refers to a body that disappears and is never found), Grey is thrust into dangerous situations because of her subtle inquiries and investigations. Smith didn't come under the same level of scrutiny when she was in Italy, but at one point during her travels, she was warned not to visit Naples in the Campania region.

"Someone advised me not to go. ... It's the core of all this activity," Smith says. "Street crime is so horrific, and when we were there (2008), they were having the famous garbage strike. It was just horrible."

The book is a turning point for the protagonist. After being unmoored for the first three novels, Grey finally has the semblance of a family. Smith hints at changes for the character in the next novel, with more responsibility given to Ana both personally and professionally.

"She basically grows up," Smith says, "and learns to stand on her own and learns she doesn't have to be accommodating to the male environment. And yes, that does mirror my personal journey, it's true. It's all a journey of finding independence and your own voice."

— Rege Behe

PEOPLE Magazine

Her FBI training defines a disaster as "anything that overwhelms you," and Special Agent Ana Grey gets plenty of that in this thriller. Sent to Italy to uncover dirt on her half sister's husband, who's on the FBI's watch list, Grey finds the calamities piling up. Smith's ploy includes Siena's frenzied Palio horse race, but the adrenaline is nicely balanced by her heroine's grappling with loyalties to both blood and Bureau.

Los Angeles Times

The first thing to know when reading "White Shotgun," the fourth installment of April Smith's wonderful Ana Grey series, is that the "mob" is an outdated term. Nor is it correct to refer to "the mafia" in the singular. It's "mafias" now, since, as an FBI colleague explains to Ana, in Italy "there's no single organization but — aren't we lucky? — lots of family-operated crime groups."

The second is the meaning of the novel's title: "lupara bianca" (white shotgun) is, in the lingo of the mafias, a murder in which the body is never found. It's a terrifying warning to an enemy, a hint of more ominous events to come.

The opening scene of this smart, briskly moving novel involves a white shotgun: An Italian woman named Lucia Vincenzo disappears one night and meets with a gruesome end. The significance of her death soon becomes apparent.

Meanwhile, on leave from the FBI, her future uncertain, agent Ana Grey witnesses a terrifying drive-by shooting at an Italian restaurant in London. She's there with the love of her life, Sterling McCord, whose similarly itinerant lifestyle (he works for a private security firm) makes their relationship a series of joyous reunions and inevitable departures. "It's easy to avoid talking about the future when you tacitly agree there might not be one," Smith writes.

No sooner has Ana recovered from the shooting incident than she's abruptly ordered to go to Italy. The FBI informs her that a woman named Cecilia Maria Nicosa, claiming to be Ana's half-sister, has been trying to contact her. As it turns out, Cecilia is married to Nicoli Nicosa, a coffee importer and the head of Italy's version of a Starbucks empire. He happened to be carrying on a rather public affair with Lucia Vincenzo, and the FBI believes he may have connections to the mafias and to international drug trafficking. Under the pretext of a "reunion" with Cecilia, Ana is instructed to investigate Nicosa's business dealings.

"To do business at his level in society — believe me, nobody is clean," a colleague tells Ana. "They all swim in the same swamp."

Setting a story of intrigue in Italy is itself a pleasure, but Smith has staged hers around the exciting annual Palio festival in Siena. (Anyone who has ever attended Il Palio, as it is known, is familiar with the magnificence of the spectacle and its impossible crowds.) Simply put, Il Palio is a 90-second horse race around a dirt track on the town's piazza, "filled to capacity with life-and-death drama, spectators clinging to every ledge." It's an event of passion, pride and "mad ecstasy." The 10 competing riders represent different contrade, or neighborhoods, many of which have been fierce enemies for centuries.

That locale makes Ana's mission rather challenging. As Nicoli explains bluntly, "We have laws, of course, but nobody pays attention. We will always be a collection of dysfunctional tribal families ruled by old men who want to settle scores."

Ana is dazzled by the 13th century compound that Cecilia and Nicoli call home, and she's surprised by the sudden bond she feels with the half-sister she has never known. She tries to sort out Cecilia's relationship with Nicoli, which seems strong despite his rather public infidelity. "We break apart, we heal, we continue," Cecilia says, explaining to Ana how her marriage endures.

When Cecilia's son Giovanni is stabbed, possibly due to a drug deal gone wrong, and Cecilia disappears without warning, Ana realizes that her investment in the case has become intensely personal. She worries that she may never again see Cecilia, because as an agent tells her, "You have a high-profile lady married to someone with whom, let's say, the mafias have a beef." Ana fears this may turn out to be another white shotgun case. And as she delves further, she realizes that her notions of good guys and bad guys are more complicated than she had assumed.

Smith manages to sustain the various strands of tension in her story well, subtly moving from one subplot to another and bringing them together brilliantly in the end. "White Shotgun" gets the job done as a satisfying thriller, but what's even more impressive is the crisp, spare writing throughout ("Curtains of laundry flutter from the windows above her. A car pulls off a ramp. A white businessman steps out.").

It's tempting to recommend this fine novel as a beach read, but "White Shotgun" is better than that, more substantive and nuanced than you might expect.

— Carmela Ciuraru, Special to the Los Angeles Times