STRANGLERS IN THE NIGHT.....EXCHANGING GLANCES......ANOTHER GRISLY GRABBER WHERE THERE'S MORE THAN MEETS THE FBI.

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS by J.T.Ellison.  We'll admit, when it comes to mysteries, BQ rarely picks up what they call 'police procedurals'. Yes I know....zillions of readers dearly love these, following the cops as they painstakingly, doggedly sift through clue after clue, stumble as they follow false leads pointing them in the wrong direction.....but ultimately connect the dots and corner the killer. For us, it comes down to how well the author conceives the sleuths......whether the cops are straight arrows or drunken burn-outs, it comes down to this....are these people we want to spend any time with and do we really care if they finally catch whoever's leaving dead bodies on the road every three days?

The dynamic duo in Ellison's thriller didn't exactly thrill us with any special quirks or qualities.....we found them standard issue, like two characters awaiting their own "Law And Order" spinoff series. Nashville Homicide Detective Taylor Jackson, a tall, gorgeous blonde, conveniently co-habits with FBI profiler John Baldwin as they jointly hunt down the 'Southern Strangler'.  The 'SS' keeps them busy as he abducts and strangles the numerous pretty girls of the book's title, then chops their hands off and leaves the hands in the vicinity of his next victim....whose missing hands will next appear....well, you get it, right?.

What lifts this book above the pack of procedurals and kept us reading til the end.....its plot, not the cops. . Ellison intersects the strangler's trackdown with the tangled lives of twin sisters who share a dark, disturbing history....having been kidnapped and sexually assaulted when they were 12 years old. As the puzzle unravels and the killer unmasked, the turn of events turns genuinely twisted and ultimately heartbreaking. You expect satisfying solutions in a book like this..Ellison makes good enough on the delivery that we wouldn't mind checking out his next effort......BQ arrests this one with a gruesomely good 2 1/2 stars, (And we used great restraint in not saying something like "hands down, it's top notch!"  Ooops....)