The Bitter Past

A Mystery

By: Bruce Borgos

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Paperback | 11 June 2024

At a Glance

Paperback
336 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.8 x 13.7 x 2.4

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Sheriff Porter Beck's life in the high desert of Nevada is relatively quiet until an old retired FBI agent is found tortured and murdered. Clues at the scene point to a mystery dating back to the early days of the nuclear age and a long-ago, all-but-forgotten Russian spy.

Porter Beck left Lincoln County to join the Army, where he worked deep in the shadows in far off places. Now he's back, doing the same lawman's job his father did for decades, until he started to develop dementia. There's not much violent crime in Lincoln County, making this murder stand out, and when the FBI comes calling, in the person of the alluring Agent Sana Locke, Beck knows that there's something much bigger going on.

To catch the killer, Beck must first find the KGB agent who came to steal America's secrets sixty years earlier. With the somewhat complicated help of his very complicated step-sister Brinley, and the unexpected intrusion of his own Intelligence past, Beck must unravel the truth about that KGB agent and the world's first dirty bomb, two things the U.S. Government cannot afford to have revealed. As the body count climbs, so do the stakes for him and those he loves, especially when that alluring federal agent makes it impossible to know who can and can't be trusted.

Industry Reviews

"Impressive." --The New York Times

"Borgos' debut may be called The Bitter Past, but with strong plotting, explorations of little-known history and a complicated protagonist, this series' future seems especially sweet." --LA Times

"Compelling...This riveting debut has traces of Craig Johnson's novels with the personal nuclear fallout in Betty Webb's Desert Wind." --Library Journal (starred)

"A clever, spy-flavored mystery...intelligent storytelling and well-drawn characters." --Publisher's Weekly

"A thrilling and assured debut, Bruce Borgos' The Bitter Past is at once a high stakes tale of high treason in the high desert and an unflinching examination of the lasting scars that even the coldest of wars can leave behind."--Chris Holm, Anthony Award winning author of The Killing Kind and Child Zero

"A crisp jolt of cask-strength, 100-proof writing." --Craig Johnson

"Vividly set in Nevada's high desert, The Bitter Past is an emotional story about the steep cost of doing the right thing. Bruce Borgos tells a gripping tale with vivid characters at a breakneck pace - I can't wait to see what Porter Beck does next!" --Nick Petrie, author of The Runaway

"Bruce Borgos' new mystery checks all the boxes: A stunning opening chapter, fascinating characters, plenty of action, intriguing story lines, wonderful humor to offset the tension, and even a hint of romance. I was sorry to see it end." --Anne Hillerman, author of the Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito mysteries

"Enthralling." --The Buzz Magazines

"The Bitter Past is a propulsive thriller set in the barren, haunted Nevada desert, anchored by damaged characters desperate to protect the people they love from violence they thought they'd outrun. Throw in the poisonous shadow cast by America's 1950s nuclear testing program, Cold War grudges simmering for half a century, and the nail-biting tension of a race against time, and you've got rural noir at its best." --Heather Young, author of The Distant Dead

"Fans of action thrillers will love this one." --Red Carpet Crash

"Rattle[s] the nerves and shock[s] the brain." --The Free Lance-Star

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