Let’s go back in time nine years. Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder mystery, Her Last Breath, came out in 2013. Sandie Herron has read all the books in the series, but I haven’t yet shared all of those reviews. Her Last Breath is the fifth in the series. Thank you, Sandie.

Her Last Breath
Written by Linda Castillo
Series:  Kate Burkholder, Book 5
Kindle version
Minotaur Books (June 18, 2013)
Pages:  315
ASIN:  B009LRWWCW
ITW Thriller Award Nominee for Best Hardcover Novel (2014)

An Amish father and his children are travelling home in their horse-drawn buggy near dusk when a vehicle broadsides them from out of nowhere.  First on the scene, Painters Mill Police Chief Kate Burkholder finds Paul Borntrager and two of the three children dead.  While she is joined in her investigation by the sheriff of Holmes County, it is up to Kate to deliver the news to Borntrager’s widow.   Once her childhood best friend, Mattie Borntrager is no stranger, but since Kate left the Amish faith fifteen years earlier, the women grew apart. 

Determined to find who caused the accident, the shattered remains of the buggy appear to be from a hit-and-run accident.  However, Kate enlists help to reconstruct the buggy for the prosecution which reveals clues to what might have hit it and why there wasn’t more debris from that vehicle.  Shock hits both Kate and Sheriff Rasmussen when they learn this was no accident.

Meanwhile the sheriff of another neighboring county gets a call that human bones have been found at the base of an abandoned grain elevator.  Kate’s worst fear has been realized.  She knows these are the remains of Daniel Lapp who raped her at 14 years of age, the man she killed with a shotgun blast, the man whose body her father and brother threw down that elevator.  She has dreaded the day his remains would be found and fears they will lead to her.

Since the beginning of this series of books, the reader has known about Kate’s rape and her subsequent killing of Daniel Lapp and the devastating effects they have had on her.  Not only does the memory haunt Kate but the fear of discovery has dictated many of her movements.  Despite the killing being in self defense, Kate is certain she will lose her job and her career if discovered.  She is incredibly vulnerable, and dread dictates her steps. 

The man Kate has been working with sporadically, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation Agent John Tomasetti, has become more than a co-worker, more than a friend.  He is her lover and man she has finally found happiness with.  Yet even that joy is guarded by the secrets she holds.  John Tomasetti has his own demons in his memories of his wife and daughters being killed by a local drug kingpin.  The two have confided in each other yet continue to dance around their pasts and find the prospect of moving in together particularly appealing and disturbing at the same time. 

In this fifth book of the series, author Linda Castillo explores the vulnerabilities of Kate and John while bringing us the chilling tale of an extraordinarily beautiful Amish woman stripped of her family and left grieving by an act of deliberate terror.  This book was both compelling and riveting.  I found myself compulsively turning pages, driven to the unexpected and disturbing conclusion.  Highly recommended.