ARC Review: The Riddle Maker by Bruce Borgos

The Riddle Maker
Author: Bruce Borgos
Series: Porter Beck (Book 4)
Publication: Minotaur Books (November 17, 2026)

Description: In the latest in this USA Today bestselling series, Nevada sheriff Porter Beck receives an anonymous riddle leading him to a body hidden for decades, leading Beck and his team in a chase to unravel riddles that will help them uncover and stop a long-time serial killer.

Porter Beck is the sheriff of Lincoln County, Nevada, a vast expanse of desert and mountains best known to the outside world for the top-secret installation called Area 51. Just down the highway sits a weathered mailbox where UFO believers leave messages for aliens. But this time, the message is for Beck

It’s a riddle. And when Beck and his team decipher it, the answer leads them to the shrinking waters of Lake Mead and an oil drum chained to the bottom. Inside are the remains of someone missing for more than fifty years, someone tied to Beck by a thread of DNA stretching deep into his own past.

Enter Jett Lowell, a pint-sized but fearless FBI profiler who believes Beck’s riddle is connected to one she received seventeen years earlier, shortly before the disappearance of someone close to her.

Convinced they are hunting a serial killer, Beck and Jett follow a trail of riddles from the deserts of Nevada to the mountains of Arizona, and finally to the red rock wilderness of Utah, racing to uncover a chain of murders spanning generations before the killer unleashes a final, horrendous act decades in the making.

My Thoughts: In the fourth Porter Beck mystery, Beck receives a riddle. Left at an isolated mailbox outside of Area 51 and composed of letters cut from magazines, the riddle leads Beck to Lake Mead and a long-submerged, chain-wrapped barrel. The barrel contains the remains of Beck's grandfather who disappeared many years ago. 

FBI profiler Jett Lowell hears of the riddle and discovery and comes to Beck because she too had received a riddle some years earlier that she believes might lead to the location of the remains of her younger brother who was kidnapped when she was a teen. Beck solves that tiddle too and the remains are discovered.

Both Beck and Jett are on a quest to find the serial killer who has been active for more than 50 years but with long-gaps between his kills. 

Meanwhile Beck is dealing with an experimental treatment to treat his eye disease and planning a marriage to his pregnant girlfriend who is also a sheriff's deputy. When she is shot at while examining the illegal kill of an elk, they wonder if the shooting is connected to the serial killer. There are also unexplained crop circles showing up in alfalfa fields in the county. 

This was another excellent mystery. I liked the desert Southwest setting. I also liked the characters who are all realistic and well-drawn.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.