How It Happened. Finished audio 5-31-19, 4.5/5 stars, thriller, pub. 2018

Unabridged audio read by Robert Petkoff with Christine Lakin.  11 hours.

Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives. So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story.

Not Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator and interrogator specializing in telling a true confession from a falsehood. He’s been circling Kimberly and her conspirators for months, waiting for the right avenue to the truth, and has finally found it. He knows, as strongly as he’s known anything, that Kimberly’s story—a grisly, harrowing story of a hit and run fueled by dope and cheap beer that becomes a brutal stabbing in cold blood—is how it happened. But one thing remains elusive: where are Jackie and Ian’s bodies?   from Goodreads

“When you kill someone, you have two choices. The first one is to try to hide how you did it, which is what almost everyone does, and almost everyone gets caught. The second one is to show exactly how you did it – and then prove it couldn’t have happened that way.”

Rob Barrett got the confession he wanted.  For all the good it did him since it the evidence showed it to be a lie.  But Rob knows who did it and it doesn’t matter if he gets demoted and sent away to an FBI outpost he will find his way back to Maine and the truth.

I liked Rob’s backstory and his connection the the small Maine town and I was kept guessing, maybe not as much as who did it but how.  Not all things wrapped up happily, but enough to satisfy.   Koryta always comes through for me with his thrillers.