I don't know how to review this one. There was so much I liked - and so much I didn't. The completely gratuitous gore at the beginning had me immediately mark it as a DNF, but I found myself interested in returning, so I did, just skipping those first number of pages that were completely unnecessary. Same with the main character Beck - overall a great character, but the lewd way he talks about Sana - ugh, just no. Completely gross and unnecessary - and didn't even seem in keeping with the story. Very out of place. And then the climax is written completely muddled, so I still don't really understand what happened. This book needs better editing and some major rewriting before going to publish.

All that said - the story itself was interesting, despite one of the "twists" (who the illegal turns out to be) being so obvious I could see it immediately by something like chapter 5, which was annoying. I would be interested in reading more of this series, but this reads like a first draft, not a work ready to be published. :-(

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC.
Absolutely absorbing with an opening that was chilling to the bone.
It features Sheriff Porter Beck and the case of a horribly tortured and murdered ex-FBI agent. We go between today and the 50's Cold War, which was fascinating.
When the FBI becomes involved, Porter wonders what on earth is going on. I really liked Porter and his relationship with his father and adorable adopted sister. Hopefully this is the start of a series! Highly recommended!

Huge thanks to the publisher and NetGallery for the advance copy in return for an honest review.

Hands down the best thriller I've ever read! Perfectly balanced between the past and present, the story flowed nicely and kept surprising me. Finding out who Georgiy turned out to be was huge and so well done! I sincerely hope we see more of this author, please!

This novel was excellent. It is a story about Sheriff Porter Beck who lives in the high desert of Nevada. An old man, a former FBI agent was found tortured and killed and that kicked off a tense, fast moving story. The story weaves in and out from the present to back to the 50's and a young Russian spy gets hired at a nuclear testing site. That action so long ago has now brought murder to the here and now. As someone born in the 50's, I remember the cold war and this was very fascinating.

I loved this story. It was well written and the characters were vivid and real. I so hope that this will be a series about Sheriff Beck. I really could not stop reading this book once I started. Many twists and turns that led to the revelation of quite a few secrets.

If I could give this book more than five stars, I would!

I highly recommend this book and I want to thank Minotaur Books for the invite for an early read via NetGalley.

Good book! This book had a bit of everything! It had suspense, intrigue, action, murder, mystery, and so many crazy twists and turns! The storyline was very interesting and had me glued to my Kindle! I will definitely recommend reading this book as it was well worth reading! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

I really enjoyed this book. The historical storyline, the current day story, the characters, the twists and surprises, they all came together to make a true page-turner. I'm looking forward to reading more Bruce Borgos books.

Where’s some place you’ve gone for vacation that was memorable, why?

When I was a kid, my mom and step-father eloped in Vegas. It was a memorable trip because we drove (being stuck in a car with 6 people is a lot) and when we went out to eat there were roaches on the bench at the restaurant. It did make for quite a memorable time!

Porter is a small town sheriff outside of Las Vegas, Nevada doing the job his father retired from. Everything is quiet until an old retired FBI agent is found brutally tortured and killed. When the FBI comes knocking, Porter can’t help but wonder if bigger things are going on. Will he be able to figure it all out before things from the past get out of hand and lives are ruined?

This was a fun and exciting cold war thriller. The past and present time line added depth to the story and made the big reveal even that much better. The plot of this story was unique and not one I had read before – that’s always a plus. I enjoyed the undertones of romance, along with the thriller and mystery aspect of this one. I enjoyed the family dynamic between Porter, his dad, and his adopted sister. She added so much to the story. It’s easy to see that this book will make an interesting series.

I recommend you check this one out July 18th.

Thank you to the publisher St Martin’s Press, @StMartinsPress, @netgalley, and the author, for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I received a digital copy of “The Bitter Past” from Net Galley to read and review. My thanks to Net Galley, the publisher and especial the author, Bruce Borgos for a very entertaining and exciting book.
The book fits the cliche “ a real page turner” and another, “ you will not want to put it down”, but there is nothing tired about this taut thriller. The author gives the book a different plot that begins with the Sherif of a rural Nevada county at the crime scene of a horrible murder. A man, a retired FBI agent , sits blind to a chair. He had been tortured horribly by someone who wanted information. But about what? For all anyone knew the man lived quietly and was long out of the game. Meanwhile the Sheriff’s office is called to investigate the vandalism of three 50 year old graves, the caskets emptied , bones gone. Sheriff Porter Beck begins investigating, but is soon joined by FBI agent Sana, good looking and imperiously all the ultimate Fed.
This story intertwines with the atomic tests which took place at a military facility in just to the east of the county where the murder took place . There are chapters interspersed which depict events at the test grounds. Obviously, everything will come together, and the author moves things right along. Sheriff Beck is exArmy and no stranger to secrets. In fact , many characters in the book have secrets.
It is a real pleasure to read. and see the story unfold with some romance, lot of detection, and an exciting
climax that answers all questions. I really hope that someone gets this book turned into a series or film because it has all the basis for a super movie.
For those who have sensitivities: romance, but no graphic sex. Spies, murder and people get their just deserts in the high dessert.
Highly recommended.

This was a new author for me with the first of what I hope will be many in a new series. At once a spy story from the fifties area 51, romantic yearnings that cannot survive and a present day Russian spy thriller (thriller is an often overused description I rarely use, in this case it’s truly appropriate). The setting in Nevada is ruggedly and beautifully described, including the notorious Secret Area 51 and secret Project 57. The characters kept me engaged and entertained. The premise of the plot is original and hard to put in a cliché category.
Sheriff Porter Beck has a motley staff, some trustworthy, some with questionable allegiance. A case develops that will have him distrusting everything and everyone in his hometown. FBI Special Agent Sana Locke arrives further complicating his personal and professional life. Trust no one in this story. It’s everything you want in a mystery, there’s misdirection, depth of characters, historical relevance, hints of romance, kidnapping, murder, radioactive plutonium, and a Russian intelligence operative.
A powerful story with grains of truth that frighten and horrify me. Not a book I will forget, a fantastic read! My rating would exceed 5 stars and I don’t often do that.
It was a privilege to receive a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley of “The Bitter Past” by Bruce Borgos and St. Martin’s Publishing, Minotaur Books. Scheduled for release July 18, 2023 – don’t miss it! These are all my own honest personal thoughts and opinions given voluntarily.

I really enjoyed this book. I got to where I didn't want to stop reading. I loved the mystery and the suspense of it. I had no inclining of who the real Freddie was. It was a twist.

Bruce Borgos' The Bitter Past has a sanguinary opening few pages that were a bit difficult to move beyond, and yet, after I read into the well-developed plot of the book, I was quickly taken in. Porter Beck, a retired military man who is now a sheriff in rather remote Nevada, is perplexed by what happened here in the early 1950s and what initiated the contemporary and connected grisly murder he is faced with. Borgos does a great job of examining espionage, results of the Cold War, Russian spies, and nuclear testing sites, thus the eponymous title The Bitter Past.

Borgos is able to skillfully incorporate various characters into the novel, and his familial relationships and his relationships with his "team" at the sheriff's office are important to the progress of the plot. How vitally important we only know at the very end of the book. Borgos also moves seamlessly between the two timelines, that of the contemporary and that of preparations for recondite nuclear testing from the past.

The romance between Sana, the FBI agent, and Porter Beck is not always as strong and clear as it could be, and it creates some questions about the strength of the relationship and its direction. Nonetheless, Porter Beck's connection to his "sister" and to his father are important and seminal, and the final plot surprise at the end of the book definitely leads the reader into curiosity about what will happen in the next book. And, yes, we hope there will be one.

I enjoyed this book and believe the author will grow in future books. There were certain elements that needed context and explaining that made me scratch my head. Overall though it was a compelling read that kept me awake to find out what would happen next.

Some Heroes Have Half-Lives. Honestly, I didn't even realize while reading this book that it was Book 1 of a new series - though with the way things end, I could certainly allow for that possibility. Here, Borgos manages to capture a lingering effect of the Cold War not often seen by those of us living on the East Coast - well away from all Cold War era nuclear test sites, including the Nevada deserts pictured here and the New Mexico deserts featured in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which will be releasing around the same time as this book. We also get a dual timeline yet linked spy thriller (in the past)/ murder mystery (in the present), and in neither case is all as it seems. Borgos manages the pacing of each quite well, and the ultimate integration of the two quite seamlessly. Ultimately this is absolutely a world and storytelling style I'd love to come back to, so I'm glad there will be at least one more book forthcoming here. Very much recommended.

"The Bitter Past" is one of the best novels I have read in recent memory. Fast paced, gripping and really interesting, the plot has one asking "what if" through out. I heartily recommend this book, and look forward to reading more from Mr. Borgos. Outstanding! I didn't want it to end...

A very well written book with events from past and present in one that says the story. Reading this book made me anxious to know what the next adventure of beck will be like in Nevada.other than the sheriff we are introduced to many interesting characters. there are a lot of twist and tons that will keep you engaged.Everything about the book makes you pulled towards the story line, the characters, references about the war,nuclear weapon and the murders. thank you Netgalley and the author for the arc. I can't wait for more Nevada tales.

Very interesting story line . Well thought out and put together. Fluid even though it transpired between two time periods. So unusual - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This wildly engrossing novel transported me back to the mountains, and brown-ness of Nevada, where we spent the last nine years, in and right outside of Las Vegas, before moving to the countryside. As much as I missed winter with snow, I have to admit that I do miss desert winters.

Excellent and consuming, I kept at this one and read it quickly. I thoroughly enjoyed what I hope is the opening novel to a new series that I’m looking forward to reading more of (please tell me that is going to be a series!)

Big thanks to both Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an early copy of The Bitter Past!

This entertaining book is set in Nevada's high desert. The first timeline is set in the present and features Sheriff Porter Beck, with the second one taking place in the 1950s during the testing of nuclear bombs. (I appreciated that the 1950s chapters had headings that said "The Past." It's beyond my comprehension why some authors don't do that.) The intriguing characters grabbed me from the beginning and I found the sheriff's humor nicely offset the serious parts of the book.

The Bitter Past deals with the dicey cost of doing the right thing. I hope this will be a series because I want to know what happened after the last paragraph of the book!! This was definitely an impressive first book.

I enjoyed reading the author's notes, especially where he thanked his wife and wrote "When I told you in the second grade this was going to happen, you didn't believe me, did you?"

The Bitter Past by Bruce Borgos An intense and engrossing page turner with intriguing characters, spies, the Cold War, nuclear weapons, torture and murders. Although at times inappropriate, Sheriff Porter Beck's humor does take the edge off themore serious parts of the book. The interactions between Sana and Beck were at times annoying and seemed forced. Author's notes were an added bonus.

Thank you to the author, Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book

I truly enjoyed this journey. The author did a wonderful job of weaving the past with the present and created a cast of characters that were relatable. Truth be told, I thought the first 2/3 of the book was masterful. I was on the edge of my seat. The finale went a little too shoot-em-up adventure story for me, but it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the tale.

Well done, and highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.