Romance Reviews Today Loves JUDAS KISS!

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JUDAS KISS - J. T. Ellison
MIRA Books
ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2629-8
January 2009
Suspense Thriller

Nashville, Tennessee - Present Day

A young, pregnant woman lies dead on the floor of her bedroom, and her eighteen-month-old daughter wanders the empty house covered in her blood. Two days later, Corinne Wolff’s sister, Michelle Harris, arrives for their tennis date. They’ve been practicing for the upcoming tournament at their country club, something they’ve been doing for years with Michelle always playing the lackey to Corinne’s talented expertise. When she arrives at Corinne’s home, Michelle walks in through the unlocked door (no one in this quiet neighborhood locks their doors). The house is unnaturally quiet, and a horrific stench hangs like a cloak on the inside. Michelle finds Corinne’s bludgeoned body and calls 911.

Homicide Detective Lieutenant Taylor Jackson has just returned from a wonderfully relaxing three week vacation to Italy. This trip was supposed to be her honeymoon, but thanks to a criminal who thwarted her special day by kidnapping her (see 14, Sept. 2008), the wedding didn’t happen, and the honeymoon trip just turned into a lovely extended vacation for Taylor and her fiancé, FBI Profiler John Baldwin. Today, John is leaving for Virginia to follow up on an urgent case of his own when Taylor gets the call about the Wolff murder. A pregnant wife, a missing husband, and a disgruntled family are all fodder for rampant speculation and tabloid news. What kind of psychopath would murder a pregnant woman and leave her baby daughter wandering alone in the house? It’s Taylor’s job to find the answers.

A Taylor Jackson Mystery is always something special we can dig into and know that we will enjoy every single word of the ride. In this third episode, JUDAS KISS, Taylor is after Corinne Wolff’s killer, while another unseen killer is stalking Taylor. The love of her life, John Baldwin, is off to Quantico, but he's hiding the real facts of his case from Taylor in a lie that he has neglected to tell her about, never having found the right moment. Although it is something she should know so that she can protect herself from an unseen stalker, Taylor is oblivious to John's deception. They truly love each other, and Taylor trusts John implicitly, but their upcoming wedding just never seems to get off the ground. John even proposed a second time and presented her with a new ring while they were in Italy, but even so, Taylor is still l little bit commitment-shy.

Taylor's team of detectives are back in this third novel. Pete Fitzgerald, Lincoln Ross, and Marcus Wade are busy helping her fight some new personal battles that loom while they all are searching for Corinne Wolff’s killer. Someone is trying to smear Taylor’s name and her reputation, and her team won’t let that happen, not on their watch. Taylor’s best friend, Dr. Sam (Samantha) Loughley, is also on board. Sam will lend a friendly ear, if only Taylor would share her troubles, which she doesn’t.

JUDAS KISS is the third Taylor Jackson Mystery and follows ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, (November 2007); and 14, (September, 2008). And get ready for the fourth book in this series, EDGE OF BLACK, due out in September 2009. JUDAS KISS stands totally alone, and although the focus this time is only on just one murder and a single killer, there's another danger queuing up in the shadows, and the final spine-tingling chapter ends with a cliffhanger. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into in the next installment of Taylor’s adventures! JUDAS KISS is a wonderful edge-of-your-seat novel. It is a guarantee that you will not put it down until the very last page!

-Diana Risso

J.T. ELLISON’S JUDAS KISS REACHES #1 ON DAVIS–KIDD BOOKSTORE’S BESTSELLER LIST

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NASHVILLE, TN—January 20, 2009—J.T. Ellison, Nashville resident and Acclaimed Author, recently released the mystery/thriller, JUDAS KISS in January 2009. JUDAS KISS is the third novel in the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, which includes ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, 14, and the forthcoming EDGE OF BLACK.

After only two weeks on the shelves, Ellison placed #3 the first week, and then #1 the second week on the Davis-Kidd Bookstore Best Seller lists.

Local events on Ellison’s book tour include: Evening With An Author at Martha's at the Belle Meade Plantation, 5025 Harding Road, Nashville, TN: Thursday, January 22, 6:00 PM
and Smyrna Public Library Winter Reading Program at 400 Enon Springs Road W. Smyrna, Tennessee 37167: Saturday, January 24, 1:00 PM

For additional book tour dates and locations, please visit http://booktour.com/author/j_t_ellison

All of the books are also available for download at www.eBooks.eHarlequin.com. In addition, ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS and 14 have been translated into French.

For more information, please visit, www.jtellison.com

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Kim Dettwiller, Team Strategies, 615-321-4073 or 615-330-5656, kimdet@comcast.net

Fresh Fiction - Fictionalizing Reality

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(From Fresh Fiction - January 14, 2009)

Twisted as I am, my imagination usually guides my stories. I dream up horrific endings by villainous creations (who end up giving me nightmares,) and terrorize my adopted hometown of Nashville with crazed killers. But up to now, every story I’ve written has been pure, straight out of my head, fiction.

I made an exception for JUDAS KISS. The fictional murder of my victim, Corinne Wolff, was based on a real case.

In 2006, I saw an article from a North Carolina newspaper about a young pregnant mother named Michelle Young who was found murdered by her sister. Her death was unspeakably violent, and her child had been alone in the house for days with her mother’s corpse. The media reported a number of salient details, including the bloody footprints the child had left through the house. I watched the case, hoping there would be a resolution. Unfortunately, Michelle Young’s murder still isn’t solved. Her husband is the prime suspect.

Her story became the opening of JUDAS KISS.

The crime stories that seem to capture our interest as a society are the ones that take place where we feel the safest, which is inside our own homes. That’s where the majority of homicides take place. And we all know how much the media loves a good suburban murder, especially in my fictional Nashville. In the novel, there’s a sense of the fantastic surrounding this case, an “it could have happened to me” mentality couple with the media frenzy – satellite trucks parks on quiet streets, reporters camped on the lawns, every moment chronicled. It doesn’t happen that way in the Section 8 housing. The drug and vendetta killings don’t make the news very much. So in a sense, I’m capitalizing on what does capture our attention.

But JUDAS KISS wasn’t the easiest book to write. Any time an author is faced with a child at a crime scene, a tightrope appears from your laptop, and gets thinner every moment you spend looking at it. It’s a difficult balancing act. Bad things do happen to children. Bad things do happen to animals. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of reading about either. Reality can stay out of my fiction, thank you very much.

So when I wrote the opening of JUDAS KISS, I didn’t give it much thought, simply because I wasn’t killing Corinne Wolff’s child. I was in safe territory. But one of my independent readers was very unhappy with the opening. She was terribly upset with me for leaving Hayden Wolff alone with her mother’s dead body. “If the husband did it, there’s no way he would leave the child alone like that. No one would. You’re going to alienate mothers all across the country.” I was struck by that statement, obviously. That’s not the goal behind these stories.

So I sent my reader the links to the real case. In the book, I’d actually toned down some of the “real” parts because they were so dreadful. My reader came back with a new eye – she understood now. She was horrified by the real case, understood what I was doing. She realized that I never set out to shock or offend with this story. I only wanted to give the real victim, Michelle Young, some closure. Her story affected me in ways I couldn’t imagine. I’ve found that reality can sometimes throw me for a loop.

We mystery writers are a strange lot. We write about murder and mayhem all day. We walk a fine line between victims and victimizing. I try very, very hard to make sure the violence in my books is never gratuitous. I always strive to make sure that my victims have a reason, a place, a purpose. They aren’t just dead bodies stacking up like cordwood to move the story along. That’s just not why I wanted to write crime fiction. I wanted to find ways to give some justice to those who didn’t have anyone to fight for them, to right the wrongs, and penalize the guilty. In my books, the bad guys get caught, and they are punished. Justice is served. The white hats win. That’s why I got into crime fiction.

But it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could do something for the Michelle Young’s of the world.