Digital Velocity by Reily Garrett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ethan McAllister was shot in the leg when he and his partner responded to a tip and walked into a murder in progress. But it wasn’t a garden-variety murder. It was a psychotic torture session to be videoed and shown on the dark web. Lexi, a young orphan saved from the street by prostitutes and mentored by the aforementioned murder victim, was a digital wizard who was tracking the killers’ posts online. Her tips to Ethan had been anonymous until he was shot, then she made a clandestine visit to him in the hospital. From that visit was born a rather tentative romance and a mutual effort to catch the diabolical killer.
Digital Velocity exists in two worlds. It is a detective thriller and a steamy romance. The characters are nicely developed, and they are numerous. Ethan has many siblings who protect him and harass him in equal quantities. Reily Garrett’s prose is generously descriptive, which may appeal more to her romance audience than the thriller aficcionados who might find the pace slows in places. The story relies heavily on technology, but it does not burden the reader with jargon or arcane details. There is also a canine component to the story that adds humanity to the characters. The antagonist is deliciously evil—think high tech Hannibal Lecter.
Highly Opinionated 