Specimen Song

Specimen Song
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1453246754

A “plain-spoken, deep-thinking Montana cattle inspector” takes on a serial killer in DC (The New York Times Book Review). With misgivings, cattle inspector and sometime deputy Gabriel Du Pré has left his hometown of Toussaint, Montana, for big-city Washington, DC, where the Métis Indian fiddler has agreed to play his people’s music for a Smithsonian festival. But like the frightened and confused horse galloping wildly down the National Mall, Du Pré is very much out of his element. He does know how to catch and calm a runaway horse, however. If only catching a killer could be so simple. When a Cree woman from Canada who came to sing in the festival is found murdered, her death is just the first in a series of fatal attacks on Native Americans. Each killing is foretold by a shaman, and each time a primitive weapon is used. As the body count rises, Du Pré fears he might be the serial killer’s ultimate target. New York Times–bestselling author Ridley Pearson says about Peter Bowen’s Montana mysteries: “The best of Tony Hillerman meets Zane Grey . . . Du Pré is a character of legendary proportions.” And Booklist calls Gabriel Du Pré “one of the most unusual characters working the fictional homicide beat.” Specimen Song is the 2nd book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pré series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Solus

Solus
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504050908

Gabriel Du Pré is back in action, coming to the aid of a whistleblower on the run, in this all-new novel in a “wonderfully eclectic and enjoyable series” (Booklist). When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du Pré the man. The Métis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he’s already got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town. As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe’s testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the prison’s brutal interrogation program. Now, Temple Security’s billionaire founder, Lloyd Cutler, wants him dead. But how long can the fugitive and his family lay low before Cutler’s mercenaries come to Du Pré’s hometown looking for trouble? Packed with pulse-pounding suspense, wry humor, and the romance of small-town Montana, Solus continues the irresistible adventures of the one of a kind Gabriel Du Pré, “a character of legendary proportions” (New York Times–bestselling author Ridley Pearson). Solus is the 15th book in the Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pré, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Badlands

Badlands
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2003-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0312262523

From the critically acclaimed author of "Ash Child" comes the tenth installment in the popular series A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pr.

Nails

Nails
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 145324686X

“Fiddler, father, widower, cowboy and lover, Du Pré has the soul of a poet, the eyes of a wise man, and the heart of a comic” (The New York Times Book Review). Gabriel Du Pré’s precocious granddaughter, Pallas, has returned from her Washington, DC, boarding school, and trouble seems to have come along for the ride. Du Pré’s girlfriend’s son, Chappie, is also back from serving in Iraq, minus one leg and one eye. As the family tries to help him adjust to civilian life, the town is invaded by a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist sect, whose preacher is hell-bent on imposing his own beliefs on the easygoing people of Toussaint, where even the most pious prefer to keep God to themselves. Du Pré is content to ignore the evangelists, until a mountain hike turns up the body of a little girl. Although he has no hard evidence, instinct tells him that the fundamentalists may be to blame. Du Pré hunts the countryside for the young girl’s killer, wishing as always that the outside world would leave his beloved Montana alone. In this “admirable, highly original” series, “Du Pré, a Métis Indian, ignores the speed limit, smokes hand-rolled cigarettes and drinks whisky like it was water. He also plays fiddle like an angel, takes care of his friends and defends the weak with equal passion” (Publishers Weekly). Nails is the 13th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pré series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Wolf, No Wolf

Wolf, No Wolf
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Montana Mysteries Featuring Ga
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781504052344

A storm is brewing in Toussaint between the ranchers and environmentalists, and it-s up to Du Pré to stop the bloodshedTwo men have been cutting fences at the ranches of Toussaint, Montana, loosing thousands of dollars of cattle to use as target practice for their .22 rifles. Are they thieves' Pranksters' Local cattle inspector Gabriel Du Pré guesses they're environmentalists agitating for the reintroduction of native wolves to Montana's high plains. Du Pré knows that the environmentalists are trying to send a message to the ranchers of eastern Montana. He also has a hunch that they are already dead. When the activists are found shot to death, Du Pré attempts to contain the chaos. The FBI descends, but their agents are as clueless in this territory as the hapless environmentalists. One of Toussaint's citizens committed this crime, killing to protect the traditional way of ranching life, a loyalty that Du Pré shares. If anyone is going to arrest his people, it will be the cattle inspector himself.

Bitter Creek

Bitter Creek
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2015-04-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497685125

“Bitter Creek is likely the top of the Du Pré series . . . Lively and absolutely fascinating” (Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall). Lt. John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. With the help of Gabriel Du Pré, who’s romantically involved with Chappie’s mother, he locates him soon enough, disheveled and stinking of stale booze. But a sobering visit to a medicine man’s sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery: The unsolved case of a band of Métis Indians who were last seen fleeing from Gen. Black Jack Pershing’s troops in 1910, before disappearing. Strange voices within the sweat lodge speak of a place called Bitter Creek, where the Métis encountered their fate. To find it, Du Pré tracks down the only living survivor of the massacre, a feisty old woman whose memories may not be as trustworthy as they seem. But when Amalie leads Du Pré to Pardoe, an out-of-the-way crossroads north of Helena, he senses they’re about to uncover long-buried secrets. Discouraged by the US military with their lives threatened by locals whose ancestors may have played a role in the murders, Chappie, Patchen, and Du Pré bravely pursue the truth so the victims of a terrible injustice might finally rest in peace. Bitter Creek is the 14th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pré series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Stewball

Stewball
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2005-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312277307

Gabriel Du Pré's Aunt Pauline has a list of husbands and ex-husbands and future husbands even she herself has trouble remembering. So Du Pré isn't exactly surprised when she shows up in Toussaint complaining that her current man, a lovable roughneck named Badger, has run off. His longer-than-usual absence has Pauline worried, and Du Pré promises to look into exactly what sort of trouble he has gotten himself into. No one quite imagines, least of all Pauline, that the first thing Du Pré will find in his investigation is Badger's body, lying in a remote part of the Montana wilderness with a bullet-hole in the base of his skull. Du Pré has a hunch his old friend and foil Harvey Wallace will be interested in the case-after all, Gabriel Du Pré's Montana is teeming with just the sorts of people that tend to interest Wallace's employers, the FBI, and the odds that Badger got mixed up with them seem inordinately high. The trail leads straight into the teeming underworld of illegal, remote brush races involving a ragtag bunch of traveling horsemen, with many thousands of dollars wagered upon each race. Forced to go undercover to determine how Badger met his end, Du Pré finds his own horse and jockey to bet on in another complicated, fascinating outing for Montana's favorite Métis son. Peter Bowen's tough, rough-edged, likable hero rides again in Stewball, an intricate installment in a classic series by one of the genre's quirkiest and most beloved practitioners.

Ash Child

Ash Child
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2002-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312288501

It's dry season in Montana, and fires blazing west of Touissant have spread to the Wolf Mountains. Métis-Indian fiddler, tracker, and reluctant sleuth Gabriel Du Pré suspects the fires have been intentionally set and are linked to the recent murder of Old Maddy Collins, an eccentric woman found in her living room, her head beaten in with a cast-iron hatchet. Du Pré's suspicions are heightened when two teenagers snooping around Maddy's house turn up dead in the mountains, buried beneath ash and riddled with bullet wounds. With its sly wit and comic touches, combined with colorful characters and lyrical prose evocative of Montana, Peter Bowen's Ash Child makes for an exceptionally rich and deeply satisfying novel.

Long Son

Long Son
Author: Peter Bowen
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2000-04-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312253981

In Montana, Indian lawman Gabriel Du Pré investigates the murder of a man who recently inherited a ranch in the district. Suspected is a settling of scores between drug dealers.