The contemporary western mystery series follows the further adventures of a half Indian cattle inspector and “character of legendary proportions” (Ridley Pearson).
Officially, Gabriel Du Pré is the cattle inspector for Toussaint, Montana, responsible for making sure no one tries to sell cattle branded by another ranch. Unofficially, he is responsible for much more than cows’ backsides. The barren country around Toussaint is too vast for the town’s small police force, and so, when needed, this hard-nosed Métis Indian lends a hand. In Gabriel Du Pré, “Bowen has taken the antihero of Hemingway and Hammett and brought him up to date . . . a fresh, memorable character” (The New York Times Book Review).
The Stick Game: After a Native American boy turns up dead, Du Pré takes on a mining company that’s poisoning reservation children. Is there something more sinister than greed and indifference at work?
“Wonderful . . . wise.” —The Washington Post Book World
Cruzatte and Maria: While reluctantly serving as a consultant for a documentary about Lewis and Clark’s expedition up the Missouri River, Du Pré stumbles upon a national treasure: Meriwether Lewis’s lost journals. Then members of the film crew start dying . . .
“A solid entry in a great series.” —Booklist
Ash Child: In the midst of a drought in Toussaint, Montana, brushfires, meth dealers, and murder challenge the Métis Indian tracker and cattle investigator.
“Compelling . . . plenty of action . . . a pleasure to read.” —Publishers Weekly
Peter Bowen (b. 1945) is an author best known for mystery novels set in the modern American West. When he was ten, Bowen’s family moved to Bozeman, Montana, where a paper route introduced him to the grizzled old cowboys who frequented a bar called The Oaks. Listening to their stories, some of which stretched back to the 1870s, Bowen found inspiration for his later fiction. Following time at the University of Michigan and the University of Montana, Bowen published his first novel, Yellowstone Kelly, in 1987. After two more novels featuring the real-life Western hero, Bowen published Coyote Wind (1994), which introduced Gabriel Du Pré, a mixed-race lawman living in fictional Toussaint, Montana. Bowen has written fourteen novels in the series, in which Du Pré gets tangled up in everything from cold-blooded murder to the hunt for rare fossils. Bowen continues to live and write in Livingston, Montana.