Nashville, Tennessee - Present day

Taylor Jackson walked away from the future her wealthy parents planned for her, and much to their horror, she chose, instead, a career in law enforcement. Now, Taylor loves her job as homicide lieutenant for the Nashville Criminal Justice Center. Maybe someday she'll decide to follow in her mother's footsteps, settle down to have children, but at the moment it's just not what she wants for her life. Taylor is very happy with the thrill of the chase, capturing the bad guys (or girls), and making things in the world around Nashville right.

This morning, at the most recent murder scene, is the body of a young Nashville woman that's been left in a field, quickly decomposing in the humidity and the heat. Jessica Ann Porter is missing both hands, and when one of those hands turns up, Taylor thanks her lucky stars that now she'll be able to proceed with the case. Wrong. Just when she thinks she's ahead, the one man she doesn't want to see on one of her murder scenes is FBI Profiler John Baldwin. He might be Taylor's lover when she goes home, but she dreads seeing him here muscling in on her case. When John shows up on Nashville's murder scenes, it means the case has crossed state lines and is now an FBI priority. Making matters worse, Baldwin (as Taylor stiffly calls him around her co-workers) informs her that the hand they found laying in the grass is not Jessica Porter's, but more than likely belongs to the previous victim in Mississippi. The killer they call the Southern Strangler is leaving a trail of bodies from to Mississippi to Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee. Just as Jessica Porter's body is found in Nashville, another girl disappears, and all too soon, John is off to Georgia, sure that he will find Jessica's severed hand at the end of that road. The killer's pace accelerates, and while Taylor is left in Nashville working on another case, John takes up the chase for the Strangler. He must stop him before he kills again.

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS follows the path of a madman who is leaving a trail of death back and forth along the Southern United States. Taylor and John love each other. They've been involved ever since Taylor was hanging by just a whisper of life in a hospital bed. Lots of secondary characters are animated, branching out into their own stories with each winding its way back into the main thread of the plot. Ambitious television reporter Whitney Connolly sees the Southern Strangler as her ticket out of Nashville and into the New York market. Taylor's team of detectives, Pete Fitzgerald, Lincoln Ross, and Marcus Wade are kept busy looking for a rapist, and Taylor's best friend, Dr.Sam (Samantha) Loughley, lends a friendly shoulder to Taylor as she agonizes over some very personal problems. FBI Field Agent Jerry Grimes is John Baldwin's partner as they chase the Southern Strangler through state after state, across the South. And finally, there's a leak in the department somewhere; someone is giving out confidential details to the press that might jeopardize everything.

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS a fantastic debut for new author, J.T. Ellison, and is the beginning of a new series, as yet unnamed. Two subsequent books in the works will be published by MIRA. The first, titled "14" is due out in September 2008; and JUDAS KISS is to be released in March of 2009.

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS is a spine tingling thriller you will not want to miss!

Diana Risso