The Blue Horse takes place against a backdrop of a real-life controversial practice in the western United States: wild horse roundups. To control horse populations and prevent overgrazing, the federal Bureau of Land Management periodically uses helicopters to herd and capture the horses. Many environmentalists condemn the practice as inhumane. And that’s where Porter Beck finds himself as the book begins, trying to keep the peace during one such roundup between the authorities and a group of environmental activists.

That effort fails spectacularly in the novel’s first chapter when a BLM helicopter is shot down and the pilot killed. Soon afterwards, the BLM official in charge of the roundup is murdered in a particularly gruesome manner. Somebody claiming to be part of the environmental activist group circulates a video of the murder. The FBI is called in, and their attention focuses on Etta Clay, the leader of the activists, and her boyfriend, an ex-Army specialist and trained survivalist. However, Beck has his doubts, based in part on the forensic evidence he gathers.

Although my synopsis so far might make it sound as if The Blue Horse is an environmental polemic, the book is more of a traditional mystery, albeit one with several twists. I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s some big money and a major cover-up involved here, with the activists serving as convenient patsies. Further, as in the earlier Beck novels, the villains include some hardcore, trained killers. Eventually, there are several showdowns pitting some of Beck’s allies against the bad guys.

Those allies are the most entertaining characters in the book. They include Beck’s adopted sister, Brin, who appeared in the two earlier series novels. She’s an expert sharpshooter who makes a living serving as a technical advisor on movie sets. In The Blue Horse, she’s serving as a volunteer at a wilderness therapy outdoor camping program for troubled youth. Brin and the most troubled youngster in the camp wind up alone in rugged terrain trying to avoid several trained killers. Brin and this boy, Rafa, develop a great chemistry together, while the street skills he picked up in Las Vegas prove handy in the mountains as well. Another ally has four legs instead of two, Officer Frank Columbo (named after Frank Sinatra and the TV cop), a K9 who is better trained than any of Beck’s human detectives.

Beck needs all the help he can get because his small sheriff’s department has become short-staffed. The author never specified when the first two novels in the series took place. However, The Blue Horse is set in September and October 2020. That was a time when COVID ravaged the country, and Beck’s personnel were not immune to its effects. The COVID plot thread adds to the book’s suspense and helps provide some dramatic moments. While Beck doesn’t have COVID, he has another weakness that has gotten worse over the course of the series. He suffers from night blindness, rendering him sightless after dark.

I really enjoyed the author’s attention to detail in The Blue Horse. (I’ve just scratched the surface in describing some of the colorful supporting characters.) The villains are a bit bland, but you can’t have everything. I also liked the vividness of the author’s descriptions of the book's varied locales. (The author is a long-time Nevada resident who lives in the areas he describes.) While the plot lacks the international intrigue present in the first two Beck novels, I appreciated the more down-to-earth tone, and there are enough twists and complications (along with an intriguing central mystery) to keep genre fans happy.

Having said that, I didn’t enjoy certain aspects of the book. The author falls back on some worn-out genre tropes like the FBI agents who too eagerly focus on the wrong suspect and villains who are cold-blooded killers yet keep a captured prisoner alive seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing that character’s allies to come to the rescue. My bigger gripe was the book’s ending. When the story seemed to reach its logical conclusion, I noticed that about 15% of the novel remained. That 15% introduced one more plot twist, but it also dragged on far longer than it should have.

Despite my quibbles, The Blue Horse is a very good book, inviting comparisons with Craig Johnson’s Longmire series. (Beck’s not quite there yet.) The best aspect of the book is its numerous colorful characters. They go beyond stereotypes to become fully fleshed out individuals that you rarely encounter in genre novels. Porter Beck is also a three-dimensional hero, with shrewd analytical skills, but he also has some self-doubt and a significant kryptonite that the author realistically incorporates into the storylines. I also appreciated (and was educated by) the author using a real-life controversy as this book’s backdrop. Saddle up for an enjoyable ride; The Blue Horse will provide hours of reader entertainment on the trail.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.