Shades of Mercy
A Porter Beck Mystery
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Borgos's entertaining second outing for Porter Beck (after The Bitter Past) sees the Lincoln County, Nev., sheriff pursuing a brilliant teenage hacker. The same night one of Beck's oldest friends dies of an opioid overdose, another childhood buddy—rancher Jesse Roy—is the victim of a bizarre attack: someone hacks into a military drone's operating system and uses it to fire a missile at Roy's prize bull during his daughter's 17th birthday party. The undercover agents assigned to the case tell Beck that, after the drone was returned to the Air Force, the anonymous hacker sent military flight controllers a message: "Please give my regards to Sheriff Beck. And sorry for the inconvenience." Based on a tip from his adopted sister, who works at the local juvenile detention center, Beck comes to suspect adolescent tech genius Mercy Vaughn—but before he can investigate, Mercy disappears. Beck sets out to find her, learning, in the process, that her handlers are more dangerous than anyone imagined. Borgos's vivid local color calls to mind Craig Johnson's Longmire series, but his clever plotting and well-rounded characters stand firmly on their own. This series deserves a long life.
