Shades of Mercy: A Mystery

by Bruce Borgos

In the usually quiet high desert of Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck faces one of his greatest challenges—a series of unlikely, disturbing and increasingly deadly events of unknown origins.

Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, doing the same lawman's job his father once did now that he's returned home after decades away. With his twelve person department, they cover a large area that is usually very quiet, but not of late. One childhood friend is the latest to succumb to a new wave of particularly strong illegal opioids, another childhood friend—now an enormously successful rancher—is targeted by a military drone, hacked and commandeered by an unknown source. The hacker is apparently local—local enough to call out Beck by name—and that means they are Beck's problem.

Beck's investigation leads him to Mercy Vaughn, the one known hacker in the area. The problem is that she's a teenager, locked up with no computer access at the secure juvenile detention center. But there's something Mercy that doesn't sit quite right with Beck. But when Mercy disappears, Beck understands that she's in danger and time is running out for all of them.

• ISBN13: 9781250848109
• Publish Date: 16 July 2024
• Publish Status: Forthcoming
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Minotaur Books,US
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250848109/shadesofmercy

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Wildly Divergent Storytelling From First Book In Series, Still Great. The Bitter Past, the first book in this series, was a dual timeline almost historical fiction/ spy thriller, and it worked beautifully - to summarize my review of that book. This time, we get a lot of solid character work and even more solid action pieces (particularly towards the end, but also an intriguing prologue to bring us into the tale), with plenty of "what the hell is going on here" in the middle. Whereas the first book looked to the past to tell its tale, this one actually reads as though it is bringing the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war into a tale set in rural Nevada. There's some innovative action sequences one would expect more in a Vin Diesel XXX movie or one of the GI Joe live action movies than in a tale of a small town Sheriff... even if this particular Sheriff *is* a highly trained former soldier. (And yes, this comes into play as well.) Borgos does well to show Beck's strengths *and* weaknesses, and it is the combination of both that make Beck feel like a fully "real" human rather than just another action hero.

 

Overall a solid tale more in the mystery/ action space than its predecessor, and yet it does its job of making the reader *need* the next book perfectly.

 

Very much recommended.

[chymerra]

Shades of Mercy is the second book in the Porter Beck series. It takes place a few months after the events in The Bitter Past. Beck is brought into an investigation where his close friend had a prize bull killed by a drone that had been hacked. This book had it all. I did find the plotline a little over the top (the Chinese secret agent angle was a little over the top). But, it didn’t affect how I liked the book.