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Author April Smith introduced her readership to FBI Special Agent Ana Grey in her first thriller, NORTH OF MONTANA. Grey returns in GOOD MORNING, KILLER. She is hardworking, sharp and tenacious in pursuit of the bad guys, devoted to upholding justice. In her second novel, Smith explores the personality she has created in Ana Grey.
Santa Monica is stunned when one of its daughters, Juliana Meyer-Murphy, is kidnapped. Grey is teamed with her lover, Detective Andrew Berringer, to solve the crime and return the teenage girl to her family --- if she is found alive. Tensions run high between the two law enforcement officers when the case takes them in different directions. On the one hand, Grey's authority supersedes that of the local police unit, while Berringer would prefer that the Feds remove themselves from the scene. Escalating extremes of emotion stretch the romantic relationship between the two to the breaking point, cooling off at best.
Grey's persona is many-sided. She is often portrayed as too tough. The contrast between her soft maternal side and her dogged obsessive professionalism presents a woman with whom one has little empathy. Her relentless compulsion to solve Juliana's case takes her beyond the workplace. There, she has fragmented cooperation with her co-operatives by her erratic behavior.
When the unsolved bank robbery case in which Grey first worked with Berringer resurfaces, she begins to cement the puzzle pieces into a nasty picture for the Santa Monica Police Department. Grey's love affair with Berringer becomes tempestuous when she realizes that he may have knowledge about the case that could blow the roof off his department. She also discovers that he has not been honest with her.
Smith takes the novel down a twisting path when Grey simultaneously sniffs out the kidnapper who has brutalized Juliana and digs for evidence in the old bank robbery case. She will not give up the search for the brute that preys on young girls. But she antagonizes her team players with unrealistic emotion. In all, the suspense builds to keep the reader turning pages.
Smith has not diluted the violence one expects with the capital crimes she writes about. Scarcely a breath can remove one scene of molestation from the next, however remote their connection. She describes Grey's struggle with Berringer in exacting detail and leaves little room for the question of Grey's guilt. Grey's dilemma becomes, not job stability, but the fight for her life.
The conclusion brings her new self-awareness. She discovers a gentle side of herself that has deep compassion for all life. Empathy replaces raw passion.
--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad
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