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latad_books 's review for:
The Bitter Past
by Bruce Borgos
A horrific murder scene opens this thrilling mystery. Main character Sheriff Porter Beck leads a small team of twelve, policing a huge area in Nevada.
The dead man was tortured, and Beck, a former military intelligence officer, has a feeling there’s more going on. When he finds out the dead man was an FBI agent, and who, despite being retired, seemed to be running his own investigation on a 1950s era, former embedded Russian spy, thanks to intel from FBI agent Sana Locke, who arrives to find out what stage dead agent Atterbury’s investigation was.
After recovering the dead man’s files, and getting shot at by an unidentified Russian spy/assassin, Beck and company realize they must determine the identities of two spies: the young man at the nuclear facility, and the guy hunting down this now elderly man, likely in his eighties.
Author Bruce Borgos not only gives us the suspense-laden present-day investigation, we also meet the Russian spy in the past who gets a job at the facility after romancing a woman with a connection he needs, which is a scientist working on a project the Russian government is very interested in at the nuclear testing facility.
This book kept me reading late into the night as Beck has two urgent searches to manage. Beck and Sana and his team work hard to try to keep ahead of the assassin, who manages to murder another elderly man. And to top it all off, a young woman at a polygamist settlement is kidnapped.
I particularly liked getting to know the 1950s-era spy, and how his outlook on his assignment gradually changed. In the present, the frantic search through likely candidates was nerve-wracking. Borgos used the changes in timeline, as well as moments spent with Beck's former sheriff dad (suffering from dementia) and his adopted sister, a brilliant and dangerous young woman, to break up the tension. Beck's occasional puns, and his wry sense of humour are also great at easing the tension, before the author built it up again. The story was violent, funny, and interesting. I am on board for the next entry in this series.
Thank you to Netgalley and to St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for my review.
The dead man was tortured, and Beck, a former military intelligence officer, has a feeling there’s more going on. When he finds out the dead man was an FBI agent, and who, despite being retired, seemed to be running his own investigation on a 1950s era, former embedded Russian spy, thanks to intel from FBI agent Sana Locke, who arrives to find out what stage dead agent Atterbury’s investigation was.
After recovering the dead man’s files, and getting shot at by an unidentified Russian spy/assassin, Beck and company realize they must determine the identities of two spies: the young man at the nuclear facility, and the guy hunting down this now elderly man, likely in his eighties.
Author Bruce Borgos not only gives us the suspense-laden present-day investigation, we also meet the Russian spy in the past who gets a job at the facility after romancing a woman with a connection he needs, which is a scientist working on a project the Russian government is very interested in at the nuclear testing facility.
This book kept me reading late into the night as Beck has two urgent searches to manage. Beck and Sana and his team work hard to try to keep ahead of the assassin, who manages to murder another elderly man. And to top it all off, a young woman at a polygamist settlement is kidnapped.
I particularly liked getting to know the 1950s-era spy, and how his outlook on his assignment gradually changed. In the present, the frantic search through likely candidates was nerve-wracking. Borgos used the changes in timeline, as well as moments spent with Beck's former sheriff dad (suffering from dementia) and his adopted sister, a brilliant and dangerous young woman, to break up the tension. Beck's occasional puns, and his wry sense of humour are also great at easing the tension, before the author built it up again. The story was violent, funny, and interesting. I am on board for the next entry in this series.
Thank you to Netgalley and to St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for my review.