Synopses & Reviews
Praise for the Gabriel Du Pré MysteriesAsh Child
“Bowens stories are always well constructed and very intelligent. . . . Like so many outstanding but wildly different crime series, from James Lee Burkes Dave Robicheaux novels to Steven Havills Bill Gastner series, the Du Pré stories are about a vanishing way of life and the determined souls who fight a rearguard action to keep it alive. . . . [A] dazzling entry in a wonderful series.”---Booklist (starred review)
“Peter Bowen does for Montana what Tony Hillerman does for New Mexico. . . . picturesque, totally absorbing, and utterly charming . . . Anyone who has not read a Gabriel Du Pré mystery is missing out on something special.”---Midwest Book Review
Cruzatte and Maria
“A fine introduction both to Bowens work and to another Montana---that is, the real state behind the charmingly rustic dude ranch and country living fantasy . . . imaginative.”---Ben Kaufmann, San Jose Mercury News
The Stick Game
“Bowens rock-hewn hero is a solid man with lusty appetites who loves red meat, liquor, and tobacco, plays a smoking fiddle, and is faithful to his woman. But a shrewd mind and wry sense of humor assert themselves eloquently in an austere tribal idiom that eschews such fluff as prepositions and rarely departs from the present tense of language---and of life.”---Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
Long Son
“Peter Bowen writes about the rural West better than just about anyone . . . gets it right over and over again.”---Rocky Mountain News
Synopsis
A secretive millennial cult from California purchases a ranch on the outskirts of the Montana badlands---the eerily silent, dry, and windy dead zone---and the Toussaint townsfolk are none too pleased.
The cult members keep to themselves, but the suspicious circumstances under which theyve arrived have Gabriel Du Pré questioning their motives and seeking answers. He soon learns from a friend in the FBI that seven of the cults recently defected members were killed---each shot to death---but no arrests have been made. Then another shooting occurs at the perimeter of the ranch, and Du Pré finds himself blindly searching for a killer, an explanation for the murders, and the identity of the cults elusive leader.
With Badlands, his tenth novel in this acclaimed series, Peter Bowen has written his most timely and chilling novel to date: a story of faceless terror told in lyrical prose and steeped in the Métis tradition of storytelling.
About the Author
Peter Bowen, a Montanan, writes of the West. Cowboy, hunting and fishing guide, folksinger, poet, essayist, and novelist, hes written the picaresque Yellowstone Kelly historical novels, humor columns, and essays on blood sport as Coyote Jack. He has also written the Gabriel Du Pré mysteries, in part, because “the Métis are a great people, a wonderful people, and not many Americans know anything about them.”