Psychiatrist Dr. John Baldwin is the FBI's top criminal profiler and is all but on a sabbatical; the only case on his plate at the moment is the Southern Strangler. Unfortunately, with no good evidence and no new bodies, it's pretty much at a standstill.Then the Southern Strangler strikes on Baldwin's home turf of Nashville, leaving one dead girl and another dead girl's hand and stealing one of Nashville's own.

Baldwin's Southern belle-turned-homicide lieutenant girlfriend, Taylor Jackson, gets the call for the murder and is suddenly involved in his case. Within days, the Nashville native is found in yet another state, and Baldwin is trailing after him, still at a loss for information while Taylor remains - albeit frustrated - in Nashville, working on a serial rapist case with a female cop as one of the victims.

Threaded throughout the story are bits and pieces about the current lives and twisted pasts of a set of high society twins, reporter Whitney Connolly and socialite Quinn Buckley. Whitney, as an up-and-coming TV star, has been receiving e-mails from the Southern Strangler, poems from classic literature right before each girls goes missing. By the time the sixth woman disappears, Whitney, unlike the police, is recognizing a pattern in the geography of the Strangler's killings. When Whitney is killed in a car accident, the police are left with just the musings of her estranged twin to try to understand what the reporter knew.

New to the suspense/police procedural genre, J.T. Ellison makes a very good debut with All the Pretty Girls; it reads along the lines of Alex Kava. There are a number of twists to the plot, and even knowing that will make the finale a surprise for many readers.

Taylor is a very strong character whose flaws are made just as apparent as her strengths. Baldwin is even more vivid, although I believe the two are meant to share the spotlight. A lot of secondary and even tertiary characters are described in too much detail; they are often assigned an importance that never comes to fruition. Likewise, as with a lot of first books, there are chunks of the book that could have been left out and never damaged the story. Taylor's rape case, for instance, is described in great detail even though it really affects only her, the victim, and the rapist (the latter two become additional unnecessary characters). It is possible that the case or these other characters will come up in later books, if this one develops into a series as it seems like it will.

All the Pretty Girls is a wonderful first effort from an author I feel will only get better with time and has a great future in the mystery field.

--Sarrah Knight