Legend of the Dead

Series: A Sheriff Lansing Mystery, Book 1

By: Micah S. Hackler / Narrated By: Eric G. Dove

Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins

Fairly decent, -but- dude! I did it again!

I’m blaming Chirpbooks this time; altho’ as they say: When you point a finger at someone else, four fingers are pointing right back atcha (Or three and a dithering thumb…). You see, Chirpbooks had an enTIRe section of audiobooks on Sale (LOVE that word!) that speCIFically were categorized as Native American Culture/Native American Stories. So, knowing I’d be happily wallowing in a Week O’ Mysteries soon, seeing Native American Heritage Month was coming to an end? I saw Legend of the Dead, saw that it brought NA history and folklore/mythology into a Detective story (Well, Sheriff), and man! I soooo chucked my pittance at the series!

It wasn’t until I was full-well into the audiobook that I realized: Hey! the Sheriff’s NOT Indian (I’m going with Joseph M. Marshall’s choice o’ word), and Hey! Is Micah S. Hackler, uhm, NOT Indian as well? So I hit PAUSE, like, posthaste to Google him. It appears as tho’ Hackler is grasping when it is stated that he can trace his lineage back to Cherokee survivors, but man! it really is going waaaaay far to get there. Does it help that Hackler’s father grew up on an Oklahoma Reservation. God, soooo grasping at straws on this end…

And so I offer my most sinCERest of apologies YET AGAIN for not scoping out background before buying, presenting, Listening, reviewing. But dude! I dooo try… >so sorry<

So what have we got with this book, the first in the “Sheriff Lansing” series?

The story opens in New Mexico (Huzzah!) where pillagers of Indian Heritage/Artifacts are starting to put their plunder into a truck as they imbibe in sophisticated adult beverages. A dust storm swirls up outta nowhere, eeeeerie sounds, a gun going off. The survivor SWEARS it was some boogey man type o’ creature, and so Sheriff Lansing is off to inspect the scene.

At the same time, a US Senator is trying to push a land swap through, whereby 150,000 acres are being given up by the local Zuni tribe. But there’s a hitch: A lawyer for the tribe says it’s a No-Go UNLESS the Senator meets with The Watcher, a Zuni elder who’s revered. Uhm, I’m toooo busy, sayeth the Senator, but he’s goaded to get the land swap done NOW by an Uber-powerful businessman.

Well now, we have a befuddled Sheriff who gets news from an attractive doctor pointing to something strange about the corpse of Plunderer #1 being kinda sorta hinky. -And- the Senator, who travels to meet The Watcher stumbles into a hornet’s nest of murderous mayhem. Soon, the paths of the pair meet, and it’s up to them to stave off their own demises at the hands of bloodthirsty Whozzis hellbent on killing the pair.

As the day wears on, as the sun starts to set, alarm bells have sounded to the attractive doctor, and the powerful businessman’s daughter just KNOWS her slimeball dad’s up to no good. The paths of this pair meet conveniently as well, they pair up and go, on their own, by their lonesome, to find the Sheriff, the Senator.

All Hell breaks loose.

It’s a decent enough story, and I did enjoy the Mystical elements, but the Number One review I checked out was quick to say that author Hackler didn’t do enough research and got a few things horribly wrong. Fortunately, I don’t check out reviews until after I’ve finished with a book, and so my enjoyment was not eclipsed by such damning information. I felt there was plenty of flow, I loved The Watcher, and the end was satisfying if a bit overdone (Think Shakespearean Tragedy…). The budding romance didn’t overpower anything in the slightest, so there was a bit of an appeal to it as something with room to grow in the series.

Eric G. Dove as narrator? Oh, yessss… He ROCKED Mapping the Interior as it crashed to its denouement. Here? Ack, oh nooooo. He sounds sooo bored with what he’s reading, no interest in any of the main protagonists, the action going on. -BUT- while he cranks it up a notch for dialogue, he majorly steps it up for The Watcher, inhabiting him most personally. Which is probably why The Watcher was my faaaavorite character of the whole story. So, going with >Meh< on the majority of the story for Dove, but thanking him most mightily for respecting the Single. AWEsomely. Written character!

All in all? I’m starting to feel that m’ tepid response to Healer of the Water Monster, m’ applause to Brian Young for just writing it, are a tad, well, unfair. When patently NON-Indian authors get their stories published, getting details wrong? Jeez, soooo gonna Google the beJESus for Indigenous writers of Mysteries next year!

Or p’raps, even sooner. As I’m sooo loving Mysteries, it’d be sooo nice to get it right!

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