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A New Allie Armington Murder Mystery By Award-Winning Author Louise Gaylord

There’s a Bad Apple in the Big Apple

The trouble started with a call from her sister, a supermodel, in New York City. The next thing she knew, Allie Armington, young, bright, successful and slightly bored Texas attorney, was on a plane to the Big Apple. It was downhill from there.

Beautiful women are showing up dead, neat X marks carved in their breasts with almost surgical precision. Chilling enough in the abstract, but made all too real when Allie’s sister’s roommate turns up among them.

In a New York minute, Allie’s up to her eyeballs in an NYPD sting operation targeting mega-rich men hosting parties in a secluded castle on the exclusive Jersey shore, complete with masks, mysterious monikers, models and mischief of the carnal and chemical kind. winning author of Anacacho, first in the Allie Armington Mystery series. A world traveler and opera buff, Louise divides her time between Houston, Texas; Montecito, California; and Old Forge, New York in the Adirondacks. Louise is currently at work on the third book in the Allie abduction.

Just as things get really dangerous, enter Uvalde, Texas’s ex-Sheriff Bill Cotton, Allie’s long lost heartthrob, in Ivy League apparel and minus the Texas drawl.

From the Rich Boys’ club to the mysterious Sigrid Hale, there are surprises galore. Once again Allie demonstrates her incredible ability to get into trouble. Let’s hope she’s as good at getting out if it.

Heavenly Hearts

THE DISH / Martha Smilgis
Santa Barbara News Press

2/15/05

Xs in New York Times magazine

WHO DUN IT: Birnam's clubhouse was the scene of a swell soiree and book signing by Louise Gaylord. Her second novel "Xs" is a chilling Manhattan tale that puts her up there with mystery queen Mary Higgins Clark. ... Bob Ledner's jazz combo gave Gaylord's party a Manhattan nightclub atmosphere and provided perfect background music for Direct Relief International's Thomas Tighe and wife Carrie when urbanely chatting with comely Caryl Beadel. ... Louise and her husband Ted are on the Opera S.B. Board, and support the Houston and Sarasota operas, which explained the presence of opera buffs -- handsome Chris Carroll, elegant Joan Rutkowski and industrious Steven Sharpe....

TIMELY HEROINES: Louise's tres sexy characters come from the voice of a hip young woman. "I watch TV to get my material," confesses the author, who didn't start writing until her three children were grown. Originally from Houston, Louise and Ted (in trucking biz) now rotate among Texas, Montecito and Adirondacks residences. (He's also on the Washington, D.C.-based boards of the Jamestown and Natural History Foundations.) ... Louise's writing career has been an arduous climb with requisite rejection slips (badges of honor!) until success came with her first novel "Anacacho," a thriller set in Texas. She praises the S.B. Writers Conference for inspiration and Little Moose Press. "Xs" is available at Tecolote and Chaucer's....