TJ's Reads

Welcome to TJ Hock's World of Reading

Archive for November, 2012

I am always excited when I find a new author and figure I hit the jackpot when that author has written a series. I hit the jackpot in 2010 when I won The Cold Room on LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I did a little research on the author J. T. Ellison and foundThe Cold Room was the fourth book in a series featuring Taylor Jackson. If you like psychological thrillers with a strong, yet vulnerable protagonist, these books are for you.

Jackson is a homicide detective in Nashville, Tennessee who has a history of turning up serial killers. That certainly leads to very interesting conversations with her fiancé, John Baldwin who is an FBI profiler. In The Cold Room, Taylor is on the search for a killer who slowly starves his victims to death as he watches. And this is only one of his perversions!

Taylor and John find that the case each has been working on has now become one. Their journey takes them back to Italy (read the first 3 to see how Italy plays into their story – you won’t be sorry). The hunt is complicated by a brooding New Scotland Yard detective James “Memphis” Highsmythe who is “hot” after Taylor while they are all “hot” after the killer.

If you have a bit of a “dark” side, as my reading group knows I do and have not yet read The Cold Room, you have just hit the jackpot! The Taylor Jackson series will give you a glimpse into the dark side witnessed by law enforcement officers worldwide.

After this initiation to the Taylor Jackson series I introduced my Murder Among Friends book club to Taylor Jackson with the first book of the series All the Pretty Girls.  I was a little nervous that the book would be a bit gruesome for the group, but it was a big hit with the other members.  Taylor and John Baldwin are introduced as they find themselves both working on cases that involve The Southern Strangler.  A local TV reporter is also on the case.  She has no idea how close to home this serial killer will get.  This killer’s trade mark is the object he leaves at the crime scene of the victim.  It’s the hand of his previous victim.

There are seven books total in the series.  I loved them all.  The titles in the order of publication are All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss, The Cold Room, The Immortals, So Close the Hand of Death, and Where All the Dead Lie.

           

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