Some sixteen years later, Caitlin now known as C.J. has graduated from college, completed the police academy, progressed to Police Offer Level 2 in Los Angeles, married, put her husband through law school, and then divorced him when she discovered his affair.

In reality, C. J.’s personal “boogeyman” is a serial killer with an IQ high enough to have analyzed profiles, and sophisticated enough to have mixed up the parameters, thus thwarting the police for over twenty years. He is presently in L.A. and has become “The Hourglass Killer.” Strangling one girl on the last day of November, and then December, precisely four hours after abduction; his mark is an hourglass tattoo administered after death.

The story begins on the last day of January and C.J. is slated to become January’s victim. The killer had seen her on a short news story, remembered her as one of his few failures and immediately put her in his line-up. His pattern is to study his proposed victims intently for a month prior to striking. An electronic whiz, he finds a way to enter his victim’s residences and install a web camera in the bedroom. He then broadcasts that transmission on the Internet as a porn site, running a pseudo contest for the viewer to vote for Miss November, December or January. C.J. is Miss January.

On January 31, an e-mail message is sent to the FBI computer crime section alerting them to the web site. At this point it will be very helpful to the reader if their computer knowledge extends to understanding methods of blocking traces of origins of e-mail, computer web sites, etc. Since many of these porn sites are presented with the consent of the viewed, the process by which the FBI decides this is an invasion of privacy is a bit iffy.

Meanwhile C.J. is kidnapped. Last Breath takes place in one day; when the FBI makes the connection to the “Hourglass Killer” they realize they have 4 hours only to save her. The action is fast paced and the complex plot twists around in a credible fashion. The characters with the exception of C.J. are not particularly well developed.

As fast as it moves, as serious the crime, the trivialization of a serial killer by constantly viewing him as a “boogeyman” is troubling. Since the time span is so short, the story has to be built on events that have occurred in the past. This is not done by flashbacks but by the characters rehashing past events in conversation. Although it adds to the sense of urgency to do it this way, apart from the computer expertise employed and dwelled upon, LastBreath becomes a frenetic tale consumed by the past with little sense of a future beyond living through the next hour.

--Thea Davis