{"id":2862,"date":"2023-05-04T15:29:06","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T15:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2862"},"modified":"2023-05-29T21:50:09","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T21:50:09","slug":"the-bitter-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2862","title":{"rendered":"The Bitter Past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The high desert of eastern Nevada is Borgos\u2019s setting for this series debut, and it opens with the most violent death Sheriff Porter Beck has seen. A retired FBI agent, Ralph Atterbury, looks to have been tortured for hours, his skin removed in strips and his nipples blowtorched. It can\u2019t be a routine break-in, but what could the man have done that would inspire such rage? Flashing back to supposedly a more apple-pie time, Nevada in the Cold War, we meet Freddie Meyer, a young man who\u2019s humble enough to go steady with Kitty Ellison, a bookish girl who \u201cwasn\u2019t the most striking\u201d of her friends. In due course, Kitty\u2019s physicist father helps Freddie get a job\u2014he\u2019s just so gosh-darn grateful!\u2014at the nearby atomic testing site\u2019s top-secret project. Readers are let in on the audacious, almost unbelievable plan that unfolds, one that Beck slowly uncovers as he seeks the identities of Atterbury\u2019s killer and a Russian spy who he believes worked at the testing site all those years ago. Beck has the nice-guy relentlessness that readers love in an investigator. His love interest, present-day FBI agent Sana Locke, adds wiles and beauty, and the Cold War storyline is gripping. <strong>I can\u2019t wait for the next from Borgos.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The high desert of eastern Nevada is Borgos\u2019s setting for this series debut, and it opens with the most violent death Sheriff Porter Beck has seen. A retired FBI agent,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[168,55,65,82,51],"class_list":["post-2862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-crime-fiction","tag-mystery-detective","tag-police-procedural","tag-small-town-rural","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Bitter-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Bitter-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}