White Shotgun

April 25, 2011
Smith's overly complicated fourth suspense novel featuring FBI special agent Ana Grey (after Judas Horse) takes the spirited Ana and her moody lover, Sterling McCord, to Siena, Italy, ostensibly to meet a half-sister Ana only recently discovered existed, Cecilia Nicosa. But in fact, they intend to check out Cecilia's husband, Nicoli, a wealthy coffee importer with a shady past. Nicoli's mistress has disappeared without a trace, the victim of a lupara blanco, or "white shotgun" murder. On arriving in Siena, Ana and Sterling find themselves over their heads in a morass of intrigue. How deeply involved is Nicoli with the area's crime lords? Who's trying to kill the Nicosas' teenage son? How corrupt are the local police? When Cecilia disappears, Ana wonders if she herself was the intended victim. A harrowing attempt to rescue Cecilia led by Sterling, who works for a private security firm, is a truly gripping conclusion to a book with far too many unnecessary entanglements.

May 1, 2011

The latest undercover assignment for the FBI's Ana Grey cuts uncomfortably close to the bone.

Cecilia Maria Nicosa, a physician in Siena, has a checkered family background that she's convinced makes her a relative of Ana, who like Cecilia had a Salvadorian father named Sanchez. It's a nice coincidence, because the FBI badly wants to plant an agent inside the household of Cecilia's husband Nicoli, a wealthy coffee importer whose mistress, drug dealer/money launderer Lucia Vincenzo, has gone "white shotgun"—that is, missing, presumed murdered by mafia executioners who took brutal steps to insure that her body would never be found. FBI legat Sheila Kuser is convinced that Nicoli Nicosa is hand in glove with the crime families of Tuscany, and she wants Ana to squeeze Cecilia till she talks. But the job turns out to be considerably more ticklish. For one thing, Cecilia is a lot more closely related to Ana than either of them realizes—so closely that Ana has grave misgivings about her job. For another, Ana's idyllic stay at the Abbazia di Santa Chiara during the racing festival of Palio is interrupted by a kidnapping. What makes it even trickier than the maddeningly sluggish pace of the kidnappers' demands is Ana's dawning realization that every one of the Nicosas—Nicoli, Cecilia and their teenaged son Giovanni—has ties to organized crime that could well be the death of them.

Though the Tuscan setting, now glowing, now rife with criminal activity, makes the horrors of Judas Horse (2008) seem both more picturesque and more normal, the FBI tradecraft summoned by the kidnapping rings true.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

Never mind that she's on leave, Special Agent Ana Grey is still dragged into an investigation by the FBI. It's some case; Ana has a half-sister she never knew about, who lives in Siena and is married to suspect coffee mogul Nicosa. What's more, when Ana arrives in Siena it's time for the Palio, the famed horse race through the city's very streets. Great for all thriller collections, especially where foreign intrigue appeals.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2011
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 Greys 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)