FROM PEOPLE
Critic's Choice
Good Morning, Killer by April Smith

Reviewed by Rob Taub
     You have to love Ana Grey. She is smart, loves sex, cruises around in a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda convertible and, as an FBI agent, solves kidnapping cases. When 15 year-old Juliana Meyer-Murphy is abducted, Ana and her boyfriend, Santa Monica police detective Andrew Berringer, work the case together. After Juliana turns up raped and beaten, Ana forges and emotional bond with her that grows as Ana becomes obsessed with catching the girl's attacker, a serial rapist. But soon Ana herself will be charged with attempted murder after a shooting.
     In her third novel, Smith, a former writer for such shows as Cagney & Lacey, provides all the elements of a great mystery: pointed dialogue, vivid characters and a rocket-propelled narrative. Ana Grey is so real it feels as though you are sitting next to her in her muscle car. You won't be able to stop rooting for her -- or stop reading.
BOTTOM LINE: Oh, what a beautiful morning.

FROM BOOKLIST
Ten years ago, Smith's debut thriller starring iconoclastic FBI agent Ana Grey, North of Montana, earned raves from a range of critics and writers, including Robert B. Parker, Scott Turow, and James Ellroy. Now, after a considerable hiatus, Grey is back, still a maverick FBI agent. This time, though, her credentials as a free spirit seem to hinge mainly on her willingness to rendezvous with her street-cop lover whenever he pages her for sexual trysts that get old fast. When not trysting, Grey and lover, Detective Andrew Berringer, are working on the same case, which involves the kidnapping of a teenage girl from her Santa Monica home. (The FBI is called in as part of the "new politics" of response to diverse communities, especially, as Grey sardonically observes, to the wealthier communities.) The girl from the seemingly perfect home is found to have brittle, bizarre parents, as well as friends who use her as a gopher for drugs. Grey's tough exterior breaks when the girl is returned, raped and brutalized, and a series of brutal rapes follows. North to Montana created lots of Ana Grey fans, and most of them will want to see what she's up to here.

FROM THE CHICAGO SUN TIMES
The Return of Ana Gray 
BY GARY DRETZKA
     In a recent episode of the CBS series "Without a Trace," an investigator for the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility grilled agent Samantha Spade over a tryst he suspects her of having with senior agent Jack Malone. Perhaps if these two stalwarts of the bureau's Missing Persons Squad had read April Smith's new thriller, Good Morning, Killer, the inquisition could have been avoided.
     As cautionary tales go, this one is a doozy. As the author makes abundantly clear, the primary reason cops shouldn't enter into affairs with other cops is because both parties are armed and, when angry or drunk, should be considered dangerous. Someone could even get killed.
     If that little message in a bottle was all that washed ashore in Good Morning, Killer, though, it would make for a far better TV show than a long-awaited sequel to North of Montana. It has been nearly nine years since Smith first introduced readers to Ana Gray, her feisty Los Angeles-based FBI agent, then, inexplicably, put her back on the shelf.
     Wisely, Gray's fiery romance with Santa Monica police detective Andrew Berringer is used to fuel only half of the drama in Good Morning, Killer. The other, equally compelling half of the story concerns their joint investigation into the abduction and heinous rape of a 15-year-old girl, Juliana Meyer-Murphy.
     Unlike most real and imagined FBI agents, Gray is a bit of a loose cannon. She's an extremely competent investigator, but the rare Fed who is less interested in bureau politics and protocol than preserving her independence. Smith's rough-around-the-edges protagonist doesn't bear much resemblance to the robots that pass for agents in real life, and that's a very good thing.
     "When the red hand on the workout clock brushed 6:55 a.m., I hauled out of the water and hightailed across the cold pool deck, raindrops popping off my silicone cap," Gray relates, after her constitutional swim in a Santa Monica YMCA. "Checking the pager hooked inside the swim bag, I found it was blinking: Code 3-PCH-AB
     "Emergency.
     "I stood alone in the freezing cinder-block locker room, dripping freely and staring at the numbers with a secret smile. It was a message in police code from 'AB' (Detective Andrew Berringer), which usually meant not a life-and-death emergency, but an emergency of the gonads, which I could feel responding as I peeled off the cold clinging bathing suit and headed for the shower."
     After a brief snuggle on the beach, Gray and Berringer proceed in separate cars to the home of the child who has been kidnapped and, we soon learn, horribly abused by a serial rapist. Both of their departments will investigate the abduction, and, naturally, the star-crossed lovers are part of the joint team assigned to identify and track down the fiend. Big mistake.
     The story of their love-hate relationship is neatly knitted into the fabric of the procedural that drives Good Morning, Killer. Gray is dogged in her pursuit of a former Marine who lures teenage girls into his web by offering them the hope of finding gigs as fashion models. Berringer is a good cop, but he isn't comfortable taking orders from a Fed--especially one with whom he's sleeping.
     The kidnap victim blessedly manages to escape from her captor, but the damage to her psyche far outweighs the harm done to her body. Even when the case reverts to the SMPD, Gray takes such an active interest in Juliana's recovery that it quickly turns into an obsession. Berringer senses her withdrawal and uses it as an occasion for two-timing her--with another cop, naturally.
     "Andrew and I had become profoundly contaminated by the materials we were working with. ... Like a chemical reagent that causes evidence to glow in the dark, the alcohol had made that contamination observable for a brief period of time, but the kind of perversity that had acted on Juliana Meyer-Murphy, and therefore on the two of us, does not go away with daylight. You carry the toxins. Maybe he was angry at being reassigned from the investigation, had to put me in my place for a lot of reasons; but there was something about the purposeful way he took us to the edge that hinted he knew all about dark places, and savage unrestraint." 
     To describe what happens next would require me to reveal far too many spoilers. Suffice it to say, things turn ugly in their relationship, and the ready availability of a loaded weapon pushes much of what's left of the procedural into the realm of courtroom drama. Fortunately, it doesn't overwhelm any of the actual crime fighting.
     Smith is such an accomplished storyteller--with such a wonderfully precise sense of place--that, halfway through Good Morning, Killer many readers will wonder what took her so long to reprise Ana Gray. In the intervening nine years, the Los Angeles-based writer did publish another novel, Be the One--about a woman baseball scout--but, otherwise, kept busy freelancing magazine pieces and the occasional TV script.
     Let's hope it doesn't take another nine years for Smith to find something else for Agent Gray to do.
©The Chicago Sun Times 2003 

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
BOOK REVIEW DESK
CRIME 
By Marilyn Stasio 
     April Smith, who wasn't shy about breaking genre conventions in her first crime novel, ''North of Montana,'' puts her foot through more windows in GOOD MORNING, KILLER (Knopf, $24). This kidnapping thriller starts off like most kidnapping thrillers, with the abduction of a pampered teenager, 15-year-old Juliana Meyer-Murphy, that has the local cops running around in circles. But we know we're in uncharted territory here when Juliana returns home, raped, battered and deeply traumatized, and Ana Grey, the F.B.I. agent assigned to the case, is so distressed by the girl's condition that she ignores procedures and starts acting on impulse. Even more dangerous, the unstrung agent becomes obsessed with her cheating lover, a charismatic Santa Monica cop who draws women like flies to carrion, stalking him, harassing him and finally taking a couple of shots at him. 
     Although Ana is not your conventional heroine, with her unbridled passions and addiction to ''the pure oxygen of risk, of going over the edge,'' it's hard to peel your eyes from her -- especially when she persists in pursuing Juliana's attacker while standing trial for attempted murder. A risk taker herself, Smith writes in the forceful style of a true literary maverick, someone who has earned the right to break a few rules. 
©The New York Times 2003 

FROM THE OAKLAND PRESS
TV vet collars 'Killer' run with female detective 
By JOSEPH SZCZESNY
     When April Smith published her first novel back in 1994, she had no intention of creating a new series of detective stories. But FBI Agent Ana Grey, the heroine of Smith's first book, "North of Montana," returns to the streets of Los Angeles in "Good Morning, Killer," a meticulously crafted detective story that also gives a revealing look at the internal rivalries that play out in a major investigation as well as large dose of sexual politics. 
     Grey, Smith's wonderful central character, bends but she never breaks in the fast-paced story with a surprising twist that will leave readers gasping.
     Smith says she never set out to make Ana Grey into the central character in a series of books. Her editor advised against it: "He said, 'You don't want to do a series character,' " she says.
But mystery readers are very attached to the notion of a series character, and she was often asked, "When are you going to write another Ana Grey story?"
     "Even when I did 'Be the One,' my second book about a woman baseball scout, (readers) asked, 'Where is Ana Grey?' " Smith says. 
     It was when she was working on her second book that she came across a short item in the Los Angeles Times that she thought might be the basis for a new story involving Grey. She eventually used it in "Good Morning, Killer." 
     "It just leapt out at me," Smith explains. "The notion of Ana Grey, who believes in the law more than anything, crosses the line, and what would it take to get her to cross the line and then how could we still like her."
     "I'm going to do a third one," adds Smith, who says she believes readers respond to Grey because of the honesty of her perceptions and "also because she is the story."
"She experiences the story and hopefully the reader is experiencing it with her," Smith says. "She's not objective. I think readers like that. She's not cold. She's warm. She's vulnerable. She suffers in real ways. She does things people don't like. I'll continue to develop her. 
     "Whenever she's sexually aggressive people don't like that. But that's real too. Red flags go up. I'm going to take her out of LA in the next book. She'll be on assignment somewhere else. Ana is always a fish out of water. This will be another opportunity for her to really be an outsider in another environment.
     "A series can fall flat if a character doesn't have depth and they aren't three-dimensional."
With the exception of Robert Crais and Michael Connelly, two Los Angeles based "buddies" who also have developed highly regarded fictional detectives, Smith says she doesn't read much detective fiction. "They're both very good with plot," she says.
     Smith, who is asked frequently if her own experience as a police officer led to the creation of Ana Grey, says she never worked directly in law enforcement. But she did carve out a career for herself in television as a producer and writer of police-centered shows such as "Cagney and Lacey" and dramatic shows such as "Chicago Hope" and "Lou Grant."
     "Cagney and Lacey was kind of a seminal experience in terms of crime," she says. 
While working on television shows, she rode along with police officers to gather material.
"It was really the visceral experience of riding along with the cops in New York that gave me the bug about cops," says Smith, who can recall "running up the steps with them and not knowing what was at the top."
     "I like cops," she says. "They're really smart and they understand human nature. They really help with my characters. They are psychologically acute." 
     "The women I've met in law enforcement tend to be physically active. They like that kind of physical work. They're smart. You have to have a college degree to get in the bureau and they want to do good. They come forth with real confidence. Among the new agents right now I'd say almost a third are female, which is a lot," Smith adds.
     Smith, a graduate of the masters of creative writing program and Stanford University, started to write "North of Montana" during the lengthy strike by television and screen writers. It took her five years to complete the book, she says.
     "There were four leads in the book and I originally wrote it in the third person. But Ana Grey took over and I rewrote the whole book in her voice and from her point of view. It was a long process of discovery," Smith says.
     "Be the One," also took a long time to write because Smith had to learn about the inner working of baseball and the way baseball scouts look for prospects, Smith says.
     While Ana Grey is now the central character in a detective series, Smith says it doesn't mean she has abandoned her effort to write a many-layered, literary novel. Her objective is to offer readers a fulfilling and challenging story. "You should feel nurtured at the end of it." 
©The Oakland Press 2003 

FROM THE Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE
April Smith is a story teller of all sorts 
By Pohla Smith, Post-Gazette Staff Writer 
     April Smith's latest Ana Grey book, "Good Morning, Killer" (Knopf, $24) is dedicated to her father, and with good reason. He sparked a career that has spanned journalism, short stories, TV production, movie scripts and three novels.
     "He's a doctor, a G.P., and he always wanted to write. He published some stories and he would always tell me stories," said Smith, who visits Pittsburgh tomorrow to kick off the Summer Coffee & Crime Series at Mystery Lovers Bookstore in Oakmont.
     "He'd come home, have a break and tell me stories -- mainly science fiction from the books we read. There were a lot of books in the house, lots of science fiction with surrealistic covers. I just began to imitate them, like Ray Bradbury.
     "Because my father was so naive, he encouraged me to send them out. I was 7, 8, 9," Smith added. "I had an Olympic typewriter. I put them in envelopes and I sent them to New Yorker, Fantasy and Science Fiction. That's what I did growing up in the Bronx in the winter when you were confined to your imagination."
     She got a lot of rejection slips back then, but that is not the case now. Both her book publisher and the TV industry keep her pretty busy.
     Among her television works are the miniseries "Best Kept Secrets," and six movies, including "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" and "Black and Blue," an adaptation of the novel by Anna Quindlen.
     "Good Morning, Killer" is the second novel featuring Ana Grey, an FBI special agent in Los Angeles. It concerns the kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl, as well as Grey's tangled, star-crossed affair with a police detective. 
     The first Grey adventure was the 1994 "North of Montana," which focuses on a case involving a Hollywood agent. 
     In between the two Grey books, Smith wrote "Be the One," a thriller featuring Cassidy Sanderson, the only female scout in Major League baseball.
     Smith blames her television work for the long time between books, but this will not be the case anymore. She said she plans to concentrate on books for now.
     "Both agents [Hollywood and fiction] want me in that milieu," she said. "To stay alive in television ... I'll probably write one script a year," she said. "But once it's a book I'm working on, it's a book."
     Asked if she could match high-profile writers like John Sandford or Scott Turow (a former graduate school classmate) and turn out a book once a year, she laughed. "I don't know about once a year, but maybe a year and a half."
     That's how long it took her to write "Good Morning, Killer."
©The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2003

FROM THE Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Novelist to Visit Oakmont
By Regis Behe
     They are only words on a page, not sticks and stones. 
     Yet April Smith admits when she re-read some passages in her new novel, "Good Morning, Killer" -- specifically a violent scene between her heroine, FBI agent Ana Grey, and an attacker -- she broke down. 
     "I had very emotional moments writing this book," Smith says. "And to tell you the truth, when I re-read ... (one) scene, I just started crying. I was right back in the emotionality of that relationship. The hardest part was having to understand and inhabit the mind of that sadistic, sexual predator." 
©The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 2003

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Intelligent and uncompromising, this second in a series by Smith reprises the successes of her acclaimed first thriller, North of Montana. Feisty, unconventional FBI Special Agent Ana Grey is teamed with tough but compassionate Police Det. Andrew Berringer on a kidnapping case involving Santa Monica teen Juliana Meyer-Murphy. Grey and Berringer continue the tempestuous personal relationship begun in Smith's first novel: "That's how we met. Working the same bank robbery, dubbed `Mission Impossible' because the bandit came in through the roof. We don't always catch the bad guys, but we're great with the nicknames." After Juliana is released alive but physically and psychologically devastated, the case becomes personal for Ana. Learning the harrowing particulars of Juliana's ordeal and observing the well-meaning but brutally invasive examinations the girl must undergo-described in clinical detail-she grows more and more obsessed with the demented killer/rapist, a charismatic ex-marine. As the chase intensifies, so does Ana's troubled relationship with Andrew. An argument that escalates into physical confrontation changes the lives of both when Ana pulls a gun and fires. While Ana is still in the middle of the fallout, the kidnapping case ends in a Silence of the Lambs-style standoff at the killer's private gallery of horrors. Smith's finely calibrated, unsentimental writing and tart humor make her a standout in the genre. She doesn't just tell a story; she illuminates the human condition through the pain and complex lives-and deaths-of her compelling characters.
©2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM USA TODAY
'Killer' crime novel by a killer writer
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
     Three years ago, a die-hard fan of crime novels handed me April Smith's Be the One. 
     "Smith is a terrific writer," he said, and I added the book to my skyscraper-high "to read" pile. When Smith's Good Morning, Killer crossed my desk recently, I cracked it open, read it in two days, then brushed the dust off Be the One and read it, too. (Related item:Read an excerpt from Good Morning, Killer.)
     Smith tells one heck of a crime story with tightly woven, suspenseful plots and lovable but terribly mixed-up protagonists. These women may fall short in the ability-to-have-a-normal-relationship category, but when it comes to honesty and dedication, they've got the bases covered.
     FBI Special Agent Ana Grey is a woman in a man's world, ambiguous about her racial identity (her mother was Mexican), in love with the wrong man and, though not a mother, mindful of the love and respect that children need. In other words, she's in over her head.
The precision with which Smith walks the reader through a rape victim's painful debriefing, as well as her meticulous chronicling of police work and criminal behavior, is tantalizing and smart. Grey's workaday life is an unseemly world of forensic photographers, evil but brilliant seductions, sexual-assault evidence kits and sample collecting. We experience knee-buckling observations. It's clear that the crime is the beginning of the victim's nightmare.
     When Juliana Meyer-Murphy is abducted in Santa Monica, Grey takes on the arduous task of tending to the teen's post-traumatic wounds, profiling her abductor and capturing a psycho. Overly influenced by the female genetic blueprint, Grey identifies too strongly with the victim. A fellow agent warns her not to get carried away:
     "You don't know anything about this girl."
     "But I felt that I did. I knew something. She was an outsider who wanted to belong." 
     As Grey struggles with her emotions, her relationship with cop Andrew Berringer hits the skids. They're both assigned to the kidnap case, and their personalities and competitive natures clash. But something goes terribly wrong, a fight ensues and Grey shoots him. Her morph from cop to criminal is indicative of the kinks in her personality. Her handling of her post-crime world is calculating and pushes the limits of our sympathy. We love our female protagonists to be tough; we just don't want them to cross over to the dark side.
     Smith waits until after the denouement to reveal the meaning behind the book title. It is frightening and telling and lends meaning to the delicate balance between guilt and justice.
©2003 USA Today