Thrill ride out of the gate on this ‘Horse’

IN two previous thrillers, FBI Special Agent Ana Grey stalked criminals through the same neighborhoods around Santa Monica where she’d been raised by her grandfather. Among the highlights of those books -- “North of Montana” and “Good Morning, Killer” -- were the spot-on observations about daily Los Angeles life, the keen glimpses of parallel cultures that coexist on the same streets without much connection.

The third novel in the series by April Smith, “Judas Horse,” also begins in Los Angeles, but its narrative propels Ana out of her native territory into a dizzying new world. This time the bureau is sending her on an undercover assignment to infiltrate a terrorist cell in the Pacific Northwest. The agent previously assigned to the case, a golden boy of the department named Steve Crawford, with whom Ana was once romantically involved, has been blown to bits by a bomb detonated on a remote alpine trail in the Oregon Cascades. Ana’s job is to find out who killed him.

It’s been only seven months since Ana was caught up in an emotionally devastating shooting incident -- events that provided the climax for “Good Morning, Killer” -- and she’s still recovering from post-traumatic stress. But the news of her colleague’s murder energizes her to seek justice on his behalf.

After a rigorous stint in undercover school at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., Ana assumes a new identity: that of a scruffy, down-and-out animal rights sympathizer named Darcy DeGuzman. As Darcy, armed only with a phony driver’s license and a specially designed Oreo-sized cellphone for contact with former partner Mike Donnato, who will serve as her “handler,” she heads to Portland to begin her mission.

Agent Crawford had been working undercover to infiltrate a radical group called FAN, for “Free Animals Now.” It’s a covert collection of ecoterrorists, linked to increasingly violent anarchist activity throughout the Northwest and probably serving as a front for a larger, looser amalgamation of assorted extremists. FAN operates through intimidation, with a particular fondness for firebombing institutions that insult its live-free-or-die ideology. The FBI’s latest intelligence suggests that FAN’s current target is a mid-level bureaucrat at the Bureau of Land Management named Herbert Laumann, whom FAN accuses of mismanaging herds of wild mustangs protected by federal law.

Searching for Laumann’s harassers turns out to be fairly simple for Ana, who shows up at the Portland bar where Crawford was last seen before his murder. Omar’s Roadhouse is a serious dive, “one of those everlasting beacons of alcoholic wretchedness that through the ages have drawn the outcasts of the world -- those who suffer, shuffle, buy or sell.” There, among the bikers, meth addicts, hookers, Mexican gangbangers and female neo-Nazis, Ana meets a graying hippie in her 50s named Megan Tewksbury and her craggy, ponytailed boyfriend, Julius Emerson Phelps. Together, the couple operates a small farm outside Portland, growing hazelnuts and providing shelter for hundreds of rescued animals.

To convince her new friends that she’s a dedicated believer in animal rights, Ana (posing as Darcy) tags along on several protests, including a failed attempt to interfere with a “gather” -- a government round-up of wild mustangs for the purpose of culling the weak ones. After spending a night in jail, she persuades Megan and Julius to let her stay with them at the hazelnut farm.

The thrill of playacting as Darcy wears off pretty quickly for Ana as she begins to realize that the idyllic farm is a cover for sinister activity. In fact, nothing there is what it appears to be. A nearby bird sanctuary is actually a shooting range. Julius is a paranoid heavily armed control freak, demanding complete allegiance from Megan and the two homeless teenagers he picked up from a Portland squat, and muttering about “The Big One” as he obsessively prunes his hazelnut trees. It isn’t long before Ana discovers that he too is operating undercover: He’s a former FBI agent named Dick Stone, who, after infiltrating the Weather Underground in the 1970s, “went over to the other side,” dedicating his life to terrorism and never looking back.

In this unpredictable environment, Ana soon becomes as paranoid as Stone. Has he known all along that she’s a federal agent and planned to use her as a bargaining chip in the event of a Waco, Texas-like standoff with the authorities? Can she trust her partner, Donnato, or has he intentionally sacrificed her as the only way to get to Stone? And what role does Peter Abbott, the deputy director of the FBI with political aspirations and influential Oregon family connections, play in the whole affair?

Smith has produced a genuinely scarifying thriller with a consistently vertiginous, through the looking glass mood. Every character is a hologram of sorts and every episode has the momentum of a theme-park ride. One of Smith’s cleverest tricks here is her unsettling depiction of unlikely alliances: Ana turns out to have more in common with the villain, Stone, than she might ever have imagined, and animal rights activists and white supremacists find common ground in their mutual hatred of the government.

The book’s nervous, paranoid energy is at once its greatest strength and most significant weakness. Important plot elements -- the fate of the mustangs, hints of a cult-like religion Stone has imposed at the farm -- fall away too quickly, replaced by an oncoming rush of pop-up perils. The reader has nothing to latch onto, no emotional hand-rail to clutch during the wild ride -- which is doubtless part of the point. “Judas Horse” is not so much an entertaining read as a headlong, unnerving thrill.

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Donna Rifkind, a Los Angeles- based reviewer, also writes for the Washington Post and the New York Times.