[Summer reading list]
April Smith's, "Good Morning, Killer"

Book Crossing

GOOD MORNING, KILLER the sequel to NORTH OF MONTANA is an exciting police procedural that pushes the envelope between victim and perpetrator. April Smith has a smooth, lyrical style of writing and if a crime thriller can be labeled literary, this is the perfect example. The protagonist is someone who lives in a world of gray and it shows in her personal and professional life, which makes her a fascinating character, one the audience would like to understand better.

Amazon.com review

FBI Special Agent Ana Gray returns in this complex, involving thriller about a dedicated officer's search for a serial rapist that proceeds alongside her passionate and obsessive love affair with a fellow cop, Santa Monica detective Andrew Berringer. Before their relationship culminates in a violent episode that leaves him clinging for life and her accused of attempted murder, the deviant who brutalized the teenage girl Ana has taken into her heart and under her wing has found another victim, and Ana's efforts to stop him before he kills her drive Smith's stunning narrative to a shocking denouement. But the author has additional surprises in store for the reader that involve Andrew's motivations for escalating their passion--to keep Ana from reopening a closed case involving bank robbery, fraud, and deception, which will lead her to reevaluate the man, and the obsession, that has brought her to the brink of personal and professional oblivion.

NY Times Book Review here

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.