A new FBI task force - Cyber Action Team or CAT has been set up. One of the team discover a series of murders by someone calling themselves the Reaper who has been publishing the videos of the murders in a cyber club called Satan's Playground. The team go back to what they believe is the first murder to found clues to the Reaper's identity. ( )

Fade to Black
4 Stars

The Black CATs is a new FBI cyber team dedicated to solving murders originating on the Internet. The newest case involves a serial killer auctioning off his kills on an underground website. The team track the killer’s first victim to a small-town and Special Agent Dean Taggert is assigned to liaise with the local Sheriff Stacey Rhodes. As the two develop a personal relationship alongside the professional, they find themselves in a race against time to locate a sadistic psychopath before he kills again…

Fans of the TV show Criminal Minds will find themselves in familiar territory with the Black CATs. Although the subject matter is exceedingly disturbing, Kelly handles it all with subtlety and a minimum of blood and gore.

The plot is a solid police procedural with the traditional investigative techniques and an abundance of suspects. Even though there are sufficient clues as to the killer’s identity, Kelly manages some clever slight of hand and the ultimate reveal is quite a surprise.

The romance is similar to many others in the genre with cooperation between the FBI and local law enforcement turning into something more. Dean and Stacey are both appealing characters with their own personal baggage, but this never interferes with either their professionalism or their growing emotional connection that builds slowly after the initial physical attraction.

All in all, Fade to Black is a well-written romantic thriller that includes all the right elements for an entertaining read. I have the rest of the series and look forward to continuing with it. ( )

The scariest part about this book is thinking that there probably are people on the internet that would pay to see what this killer did.

The Black CAT series is about a fraction of the FBI that deals with cyber crimes. The killer of this book has auctions online to for that pay to view the people he kills. The highest bidder gets to pick the way the person dies.

Dean Taggert joined Black CATS hoping it wouldn’t require as much of his time as his previous job did because it not only cost him his marriage but also custody of his young son which he is hoping to change. But when his team comes across the videos being posted online of the murders even though he is reluctant to get involved in something again that’s so intense he cant resist and soon finds himself in a small Virginia town working with Sheriff Stacey Rhodes who he also finds himself attracted to.

Stacey Rhodes is a former Virginia State Police officer that after witnessing the horror of the Virginia Tech shootings left the force and came home to Hope Valley and took over the sheriff’s job when her dad retired. Stacey wanted the laid back world of a small town where the worst thing that happened was breaking up fights at the local bar. When Dean and his boss show up in town asking if she knows the first victim even though she doesn’t want to get involved in something that’s sure to be intense she cant resist trying to find the killer that may be hiding in plain sight in their little town.

Both Dean and Stacy were characters that you instantly liked. They both have been tainted by the evil they’ve seen in the world and are skeptical on relationship HEA. All aspects of this book just flowed from the investigation trying to find the killer before he took his next victim, the romance between Dean and Stacy and the team that makes up Black CATS. ( )

A romance novel with crime that often has more crime that romance. Special Agent Dean Taggert has discovered an online site that caters for folks who want to dictate to a murderer the method of death. He tracks back the murders to what appears to be the first one, in the small town of Hope Valley where the Sherrif, Stacey Rhodes, is shocked to think that her quiet little corner of the world could be a focus of this madness.

Things ramp up, the relationship builds, they have to try to find the murderer and overall it comes across as a cross between CSI and Criminal Minds and I'm not sure the author is quite happy with the format. I do recognise that it's her first non-pure-romance story and I can see how this flavoured her writing. I will be reading more in this series. ( )

A "romantic suspense" novel featuring the Cyber Action Team aka CAT. That alone should have stopped me from reading this. "Cyber Action Team" to me reads as "I don't know about the Internet, but this'll probably sell if I use those terms." Indeed, the acknowledgements bestow credit on a tech guru with the author admitting: "All the computer expertise is his."
Surprisingly though, this isn't too bad. The characters are likable, the computer jargon believable and the action and suspense building, but at a realistic pace. The equivalent of a "popcorn movie". ( )