Badlands: A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre [Hardcover]

Peter Bowen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Gabriel Du Pre, 10 | Publication Date: May 1, 2003

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 they’ve arrived have Gabriel Du Pré questioning their motives and seeking answers. He soon learns from a friend in the FBI that seven of the cult’s 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 cult’s 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gabriel Du Pre, Bowen's hard-drinking, fast-driving, fiddle-playing western hero, investigates the activities of a sinister religious cult that purchases a huge cattle ranch in the 10th entry in this gripping and humorous series (after 2002's Ash Child). Du Pre's suspicions are aroused when the Host of Yahweh immediately destroys the ranch buildings, sells the livestock and erects a makeshift metal chapel for secret rites. Soon, reports of mass murders and suicides bring in cautious FBI agents ever mindful of the Waco debacle. Du Pre's blunt speech and sometimes opaque thought patterns can be hard to follow, but his pursuits of wrongdoers over cliffs, canyons and arid river beds are truly riveting. His encounters with Benetsee, a native seer and medicine man, are often comical, though the old man provides good counsel when the self-appointed sleuth, with a posse of deputies and federal agents, surround the compound for the final siege. Other denizens of remote Toussaint, Mont., including Du Pre's girlfriend, tough-minded bartender Madelaine, and his wayward granddaughter, Pallas, provide welcome diversions from the ominous goings-on behind the Host's electric fence. A buffalo stampede, tales of Indian lore and even the modern menace of biological weaponry lead to a just-in-the-nick-of-time finale.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The residents in and around rural Toussaint, Montana, are a contentious group, but when the sun sets, they are all related by their shared reverence for the land and the mountains that define their lives. When the Eide family sells the ranch it owned since 1882, there's genuine sadness among the neighbors. Soon sadness is replaced by anxiety. The new neighbors are the Host of Yahweh, a millennial cult. Gabe Du Pre, half-breed Metis Indian, expert fiddler, part-time brand inspector, and occasional deputy, has his doubts about the newcomers, too--doubts that are magnified when the FBI connects seven murders with recent defectors from the cult. The Feds and Gabe work together to make the case against the cult. Du Pre may well be the most unusual character in mystery fiction. He's illiterate, smokes too much, is never without his flask, gets pulled over when he's not driving 30 miles over the limit (local cops worry he's sick), and is by far the sharpest knife in the drawer. Author Bowen is also an accomplished poet and folksinger. It shows. His Montana mysteries flow with sublime musical dialogue. A fine series that deserves a larger following. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312262523
• ISBN-13: 978-0312262525
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,075,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Whoops., July 23, 2003

By 

Michael V. Scott "Boho" (Winston-Salem, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Badlands: A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre (Hardcover)

I'm a big fan and have followed the du Pre series since its beginning, but I can't help feeling disappointed in this one. It was seriously flawed. The cult in the story is supposed to play the role of "bad guy," but at first, I couldn't tell that anything was wrong with them, except that they dared move to Montana. Even later, the cultists weren't really fleshed out. It was hard to tell just who they were or what they were like - the dialogue was often hard to follow - and the end was extremely unsatisfying; it left too many unanswered questions.

I remember reading an interview with novelist Robert B. Parker in which he said that his first draft was pretty much what got published, and I couldn't help feeling like the same was true here, and what it needed was another polish. In fact, it needed a whole new ending.

Don't get me wrong - I'll read every one of these that Mr. Bowen cares to write, they are that rewarding - but if you're curious and want to try one, don't start here.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Benetsee Sang, October 11, 2004

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Badlands: A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre (Hardcover)

When a series closes in on a dozen volumes, the challenge to the author is to keep his characters believable and avoid repetitive formulas. In other words the author must find new ways of being creative while each new book adds more constraints to the overall story. Truth be told, I know of no author who manages this with complete ease. Thus many of the contributing factors of Badlands will be familiar to Peter Bowen's more loyal readers, while newcomers will find the story completely original.

Thus one can predict that Gabriel Du Pre, Metis Indian and frequent agent of a higher justice will be lectured by his mate Madelaine, manipulated by Benetsee the Shaman, and stubbornly determined to try his own way first. He and his own are the truest natives of northern Montana, living at peace with the other long term residents of Toussaint and jealously guarding the inner nature of a lifestyle that still reflects the wilderness about them.

When The Host of Yahweh, a yuppie religious cult, mysteriously descends on Toussaint and proceeds to build a closed community at a local ranch, this gets a lot of attention. Especially when they show signs of killing of the local wild horse herd as pests. Benetsee and Du Pre step in, and soon the violence escalates. The FBI believes that the Host is implicated in the simultaneous killing of 7 ex-members, Du Pre is enlisted and an investigation that is more like a small war ensues.

There really isn't a mystery here other than how Du Pre will manage to overcome the Host, but there is a lot of Bowen's warm respect for the Metis Indians. He captures beautifully the strange English dialect that is part fractured French grammar, part salty word selection, and part sheer attitude. Du Pre is surrounded by characters that Bowen generally keeps entertaining us, even if they are not always using fresh material. Benetsee steals the book this time with his own magical mystery tour. As Bowen writes, "Him, he will make his joke. Always does. Us, we get to be the punch lines."

I would advise starting earlier than this volume in the series, not because it can't stand on its own, but because of the amount the previous volumes contribute to the context.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Veiw it as a novel first, a mystery second, September 15, 2004

By 

K. Koesler (Tx USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Badlands: A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre (Hardcover)

As noted by another reviewer, there really isn't much mystery in this book, but there is one heck of a good story. Like any good serial, a mysterious cult, shadowy leader, stolen arms, and murder are all just a framework for the characters to act around. I will say that the death of the woman on the four-wheeler hit me as particularly disturbing, and I wish we had gotten a little more about Bart's kidnapping, but all in all the story satisfied and stayed true to the series.
Not all questions get answeres, and not all plotlines get neatly tied off, but that seems to be part and parcel of Bowen's style.
As always, those familliar with the series will get more from the book than a first time reader.
I really enjoied seeing the relationship develope between Pallas and Ripper, as well as the interplay between Ripper and Harvey. Who is Pidgeon in love with? Will Pallas grow up and join the FBI - pushing Harvey into early retirement and chasing Ripper back to Brazil?
I eagerly await the next instalment.