She Treads Softly: The Blue Horse

Friday, June 27, 2025

The Blue Horse

The Blue Horse by Bruce Borgos
7/8/25; 368 pages
St. Martin's Press
Porter Beck Mystery #3

The Blue Horse by Bruce Borgos is a highly recommended investigative mystery and the third novel in the Porter Beck series. This is set during 2020, and features wild horse round-ups, murder, and Covid.

Lincoln County, Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck and his deputy, Tuffy Scruggs are watching a helicopter pilot rounding-up wild horses for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) when the pilot is shot. Jolene Manning, who is coordinating the maneuver for the BLM, blames CANTER, a horse rescue group run by Etta Clay. Then Manning is found brutally murdered along with a young man working with her, and federal law enforcement gets involved. Beck's girlfriend, State Detective Charlie Blue Horse, also arrives to help with the investigation.

The pace is fast, the tension quickly rises, and a list of suspects grow in this well-written investigative mystery. Beck may have retinitis pigmentosa (degenerating night vision) but he still has keen insight and instincts. The FBI have a suspect in mind, but Beck thinks there is something else going on and he is correct. There is an alternate story line following Brin with a group of at-risk teens on a camping trip and a teen named Rafa. Borgos continues to write a compelling thriller and mystery

All the characters in the series are well-developed and portrayed as realistic individuals with strengths and weaknesses. Returning characters to the series are Beck's dog, Columbo/Bo, Beck’s 90 year old father who has dementia, his sister Brinley, his daughter Mercy, the identical twin deputies (Twin Peaks/Jolly Greens), and the podcaster named “X-Files."

The only drawbacks for me was setting this during 2020, including Covid in the plot and touching on politically sensitive topics. The first two books in the series were exceptional five star reads. This one gets four. I am looking forward to the next book in the series and expect it to be back to a five star read. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.