Regardless of the Consequences by L.D. Lauritzen 
Series: Lance Tallbear #1
Published by Self Published on July 5, 2021
Genres: Crime Drama
Pages: 347
Format: eBook
Source: Amazon
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Sheriff Lance Tallbear’s half-blood Apache heritage leaves him struggling to find his place in a world where neither white nor Indian wants or readily accepts him. He faces the world his shaman father turned away from and acknowledges the one his shaman grandfather prays he’ll return to.
Tallbear’s new case uncovers a mysterious plane wreck discovered in the Superstition Mountains that turns out to stir both his life decisions and ultimate direction. Along with his troubled FBI partner, Brad Hanley, they face a myriad of obstacles in their journey to the truth.
The skeletons at the site hold the clues to not only who the killers were but also why the people died. Tallbear quickly find the crash site hides a deadly secret that reaches out of the distant past to threaten the lives of all who seek it. He will need to use all his skills and experience to discover the answers and stay alive.
RofC tries really hard to be a Grisham novel but ends up with the same problems as a JG novel as it is too much to be believable.
Sheriff Lance Tallbear is at a cross-roads. His Apache grandfather, Grey Eagle, wants him to take his place among his people as their spiritual leader. Tallbear left the family to join the army and after his return to Arizona, he joined the Gila County police force. Tallbear wants to make a difference but he isn’t certain if the police is where he belongs.
One of the young teen, Sam Hawk, comes to Lance to let him know he found an old plane wreck in the Superstition Mountains where he was grazing the sheep. This crash is old and went down sometime between 1936 and 1939. While the decades old deaths of Carl and Lisa Morgan doesn’t appear to be a pressing matter, Tallbear is surprised to be approached by both CIA agent, Thomas Kane and FBI Agent Brad Hanley–although the later looks like he just crawled out of a bottle and would rather crawl back in than search through old wreckage in the mountains.
Kane leave Hanley to work with Tallbear and when they find a bullet in the wreckage which matches to a gun found in California at the recent suicide of Joseph Katz, they head to California to investigate only to run into the deceased granddaughter, Irene Katz, who wants some answers of her own and joins Tallbear and Hanley in their investigation which takes an interesting turn when ties to the Hitler and the Nazi party start to tie Carl Morgan and Joseph Katz together.
But the more information which Tallbear unearths, the more parties who seem to be a little too interested in the death of an old spy.
THOUGHTS:
The good news: The main characters in this story are very strongly written and likeable. I would definitely read further stories in this series.
The bad news: I don’t know if this first novel had an editor but there were points in this novel where things were jerky such as when someone comes to stand next to Tallbear but then two paragraphs later, he gets up to leave. When did he sit down? He was just standing near the window. I read it again in case I was confused but that was it. It’s not big things but these type of errors popped up enough that it began to catch my attention.
I read several John Grisham novels after I read The Firm (and yes, Hollywood improved the ending on that one). One of the main reasons I stopped is that all of the stories has the same plot point which was that no matter where the main characters went to hide or to find information, the mob or some other bad guys was already there waiting. Here, while Tallbear and Hanley weren’t hiding their investigation, everywhere they went they were being followed, threatened or shot at by all the various parties who were trying to get whatever was hidden in that downed airplane. I mean, if everyone seemed to know where Tallbear was going, why weren’t they simply beating him to the information.
It made for exciting scenes but things such as the ex-KGB agent abducting someone and torturing them for information without taking the time to surveillance or go in an search their room first seemed like jumping the gun as he left a body which was very obviously tortured which raised questions. He also started a shoot out in a public place (twice). While shoot outs are exciting, it seemed that an ex-KGB agent should be better and have more subtle spy skills. There was also a scene where Tallbear and Irene crawled through an old dirty, dusty shaft that most people wouldn’t have known to look for to get from where they were pinned down to somewhere else where no one should have been looking for them. It should have bought them a lot of time, first while the bad guys even determined that they weren’t in the spot where they started and then time for the bad guys to go look for them in the second area, yet almost instantly we are in another shoot out. So the whole scene was really for nothing.
This story tried a little too hard to be the next action thriller but the characters created are really good and I would read another story in this series.
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