Shades of Mercy

July 22, 2024
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.