Joel Burcat Author Guest Post and Giveaway.

Joel Burcat, the author of TEMPERATURE RISING has written a novel that combines political intrigue, deception and forbidden love. Despite the timeliness of the environmental message, he placed his new environmental thriller almost 40 years in the past. In his guest post, Choosing the Setting: Why Temperature Rising Takes Place in 1988, he explains the reason. You can read a book excerpt and my review on my previous post. For an interview, an other guest post and more reviews, click through the tour blog stop list. Be sure to scroll all the way to the end of this post and enter the gift card giveaway.

Choosing the Setting:
Why Temperature Rising Takes Place in 1988

By Joel Burcat

My new political suspense thriller, Temperature Rising, is set in Washington, D.C., in 1988. That may seem like an unusual choice. Why set a novel that feels so timely almost forty years in the past?

For me, the answer was simple: 1988 was the perfect year for this story.

Temperature Rising follows Anna Freeman, a twenty-two-year-old Rutgers law student who accidentally stumbles onto a secret effort to undermine emerging climate science and legislation. Recruited to work undercover for The New York Times, Anna is drawn into a dangerous world of lobbyists, politicians, reporters, and billion-dollar interests determined to protect their secrets.

The story becomes even more complicated when Anna falls for Coy Young, a charismatic Texan lobbyist who is central to the very world she is investigating. The momentum of the story becomes more than whether Anna has the ability to expose the truth. It is whether she can live with the consequences of exposing it.

That is the heart of the novel. What would you be willing to sacrifice to expose the truth? Your safety? Your career? Your friends? The person you love?

I chose 1988 because it was a transitional moment in history. A number of events occurred in 1988 to move climate science into public view, but the issue had not yet hardened into the political and cultural battle we know today. People were beginning to understand the stakes, but the path forward was still uncertain. That uncertainty gives the story much of its tension.

It also gave Anna’s choices more weight. She is not looking back at history with the benefit of hindsight. She does not know whether anyone will believe her. She does not know whether exposing the truth will change anything—or destroy her life. She is living inside the moment.

The setting also allowed me to bring readers into a Washington that feels familiar and foreign at the same time. The late 1980s was not ancient history. Many readers remember the clothes, the music, the offices, the newspapers, the television news, and the way people talked. But the world was also very different from ours.

There were no smartphones. No Google or AI. No texting. No email in ordinary daily use. No instant photos, screenshots, or recordings in your pocket. If Anna needed to call someone, she had to find a landline. If she missed a call, she might not know about it for hours. If she needed information, she had to search for it in a library, an office, a file cabinet, a newspaper, or a government publication.

For a suspense thriller, that upped the stakes.

Today, a character in trouble can call for help, send a location, record a conversation, or look up an answer in seconds. In 1988, Anna could not rely on any of that. If she is followed, trapped, lied to, or cut off from help, she has to depend on her wits, nerve, judgment, memory, and instincts.

That makes the danger feel more personal.

It also makes secrets harder to uncover. A hidden meeting is harder to prove. A document is harder to find. A lie can travel a long way before anyone catches up with it. Information moves through phone calls, memos, newspapers, couriers, law libraries, and face-to-face conversations. People may have to take risks to learn things.

That world was especially important for Anna because she is a law student. Legal research in 1988 was not a matter of typing a few words into a search box. Lexis and Westlaw existed, but access was limited and expensive. Much of the work still involved physical books: statutes, case reporters, digests, indexes, and journals. Anna has to dig. She has to read. She has to think. She has to put pieces together.

I also wanted readers to feel the texture of that time. In a high-powered K Street lobbying firm, appearance mattered. Men wore suits. Women wore dresses or skirts. COVID had not yet changed the workplace. Offices had strict hierarchies, rituals, and rules that were often unspoken but very real. Anna is young, smart, ambitious, and brave, but she is also entering a world designed by older, wealthier, more powerful people—mostly men— who do not expect her to challenge them.

Those are some of the reasons I found 1988 so compelling. They gave the story urgency without making it feel like a lecture. Temperature Rising is not a textbook about climate change. It is a thriller about people—ambitious people, frightened people, greedy people, decent people, and people who are not sure on which side of the line they are standing.

At the center is Anna Freeman, trying to decide what she is willing to sacrifice for the truth.

For me, 1988 was not just a backdrop. It was the pressure system surrounding the story. It was a moment when the future, the one in which we are living, had not yet been written.

And that made it the right place for Anna’s story.

About Joel Burcat

About Temperature Rising

Book Details:
Genre: Political Suspense Thriller
Published by: Milford House Press
Publication Date: June 16, 2026
Number of Pages: 289
ISBN: 979-8888193587
Book Links: 
Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub | Sunbury Press Bookstore

Storybook Lady Review
Temperature Rising by Joel Burcat

TEMPERATURE RISING
by Joel Burcat

Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tour August 17- September 11, 2026

Tour Participants:

Giveaway

The author, Joel Burcat, is offering a tour wide GIVEAWAY hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours.
This is a giveaway for a $25 Amazon.com Gift Card. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

A Hot New Chance to Win!

This giveaway is hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Joel Burcat. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

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