Review: Fade to Black by Leslie Parrish

Fade to Black
Black CATs #1

After transferring out of violent crimes and onto the FBI's Cyber Action Team, Special Agent Dean Taggert is shocked to encounter a case far more vicious than any he's ever seen. A cold and calculating predator dubbed "The Reaper" is auctioning off murder in the cyber world and is about to kill again-unless Dean and beautiful sheriff Stacey Rhodes can stop him.

Dean Taggert joined the CATs (Cyber Action Team) to get a shared custody of his son from his ex-wife. He thought it wouldn't be so violent as his last job. He was wrong. A man called "The Reaper" kills his victims, tapes the act and then shows it on the web to a select few. When the team gets an ID of the victim, they go to her home town and then they meet sheriff Stacey Rhodes. She was a cop in the city, but something went wrong in a case and she decided to get back home and replace her father as sheriff. When she finds out that the girl that went missing 18 months ago and that everyone thought had skipped town was instead murdered, she teams up with the CAT's and especially with Taggert to bring the killer to justice.

When the deaths start escalating and the killer decides to auction the method in which he will kill his next victim, the stakes get raised, and Stacey and Dean will try harder than ever to catch a killer, especially when they realize that he lives in the little town and nobody had ever notice nothing out of the otdinary.

I really didn't have any expectations when I started this book. It was entertaining but sometimes I wished it would go faster. The relationship between Stacey and Dean was one of the high points of this novel. It was very well handled and also beliveable. Both of them have things to overcome to be able to be together and close the case.

I knew who the killer was at the middle of the book, so it wasn't really surprising. It took me time to get into the story, and I had to force myself to keep reading until the story sped up. It was an ok debut book, and I'll probably read the next one, but it's not on my high priority list, which means that I'll read it when I don't have anything more interesting in my TBR pile.

Memorable Quote:

"Sheriff Rhodes?" he asked, his tone gentle. "Can you identify the woman on the photographs?"
She swalloded visibly, then nodded once. "It's Lisa Zimmerman"
"You're sure?"
"Even if I didn't recognize her face inmediately, I'd know her by that bumblebee tattoo on her shoulder. She was a finalist in a statewide spelling bee in elementary school. She had that put on a couple years ago, I guess to remind herself that she'd once accomplished something." She pushed the pictures away, the tips of her nails touching the very edges, as if she couldn't bear any more contact with them. " So she's dead?"
"We haven't found her body," Wyatt explained. The man sounded cooly profesional, as always, but also quietly subdued in respect of the sheriff's obvious dismay. "But yes, there seems to be no doubt the woman in these pictures is dead."


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