Customer Reviews

Badlands: A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This was the first novel I have read in the series, and I doubt seriously if I will read anymore. Anti-climactic doesnt even begin to describe the flop that passed for an end to this book. The characters and thier relationships were very unbelievable; this is especially true for the FBI agents who are apparently reoccurring characters in the series. The main protagonist is a likeable character and has some memorable dialogue, but it is not enough to save the rest of the book.

In Toussaint, Montana, the townsfolk host a going away party for a family who owned a ranch for over a century, but forced to sell to the well funded The Host of Yahwah. A white priest leads the cult and decrees his followers will be picked up by alien spaceships just before the world is destroyed.

Gabriel DuPre learns through his FBI contacts that seven men who left the cult were all killed on the same day at the same time in various places around the country by female members. Gabriel tries to help a woman trying to escape but when she sees that members of the cult are about to capture her, she kills herself in front of her children. When Gabriel sneaks into the compound and sets fire to an ammunitions dump, the resulting explosions are enough to get the FBI involved. The FBI surrounds the compound but nobody wants another Waco so the Federal agents are prepared to wait them out until Gabriel comes up with an idea to break the back of the resistance.

The tenth installment in this series is refreshingly original due in large part to the protagonist who though a grandfather fourteen times over, lives life to the fullest. He is not afraid to take chances and puts his life on the line to try and get some information on the cult that can be used by the FBI. In BADLANDS the federal agents are the good guys who act with restraint while the cult members pursue their sinister agenda. Peter Bowen does for Montana what Tory Hillerman does for New Mexico.

Harriet Klausner

When I urged the Du Pre books on a friend who part-times in Montana, she said, "They're mysteries?"

Mysteries! I thought they were comedies (I was still chuckling at supper, having been reading this a quarter-hour before.) - cum local color, plus a returning crew of zanies, both local and FBI.

This tells of a religious cult, Benetsee the shaman and his apprentice Pellon, the former computer person, an FBI man screaming in terror of returning to the area because Du Pre's ten-year-old granddaughter had decided she would marry him, when she graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a math major (Du Pre thinks she should probably marry Benetsee, as they were so well-matched), Du Pre cobbling together rhinestone reading glasses for his lover Madeline. And, oh, yes, a mystery.

Wonderful. Add it to your library to read, and re-read, and urge upon friends.

First Line: Du Pré fiddled the last bars of Poundmaker's Reel, drawing the last note out and then fading it to silence.

I'm slowly coming to the end of this series. I keep putting it off, but sooner or later I just have to have a Du Pré fix, and I get one book closer to No More.

Whenever I review one of Peter Bowen's Gabriel Du Pré mysteries, readers seldom comment. Perhaps it's because Du Pré is so unabashedly not politically correct. He likes to smoke. He likes to drink. He likes to drive his old police cruiser at high speed down those empty Montana highways-- usually all three at the same time.

Parker came up to it. She bent over and put her head in. "You OK," she said.

"Yah," said Du Pré. "I am doing the damned speed limit, yes?"

"Yeah," said Parker, "you were, which worried the hell out of me. There's Du Pré I says to myself, and he musta been carjacked cause he is just driving the speed limit. Little under actually. You feel all right?"


That alone is enough to make him anathema in many homes, and it's a downright shame. By not touching these books, readers are missing out on wonderful music, the culture of the Métis Indians, the lilting cadence of Coyote French, and the strong uncompromising landscape of Montana and its fiercely independent inhabitants who know how to take care of their own with no outside interference.

In this tenth book of the series, a ranch family has come on hard times and put their land up for sale. The land is bought by the Host of Yahweh, a cult from California. Soon trucks are delivering all sorts of building materials and supplies. Dozens of homes go up for cult members to live in, and barbed wire starts being strung. The Host of Yahweh's property borders the Badlands where the wild horses live. The cult doesn't want the horses to come on their land for water or grazing, and when they post a couple of members out there to kill the horses, that bothers Du Pré. Of course, he's already bothered because his friend in the FBI has let him know that everyone who tries to leave the cult winds up dead.

Trying to get the goods on the Host of Yahweh isn't the only thing going on in Badlands. Bowen's series is always filled with music and laughter. Du Pré's fiddle provides the backdrop to the real life moments of coping with failing eyesight and headstrong grandchildren and trying to scratch out a living on the land. That California cult may think it can have its way with the country hicks who live around Toussaint, Montana, but these tough folks know how to take care of their own with love, with spirit, and with honesty. Reading a Gabriel Du Pré mystery is reading about America the way it used to be... and the way it still is if you happen to mosey down the right highway.

The ongoing saga of Gabriel DuPre and his extended family/network of friends is superbly continued in this 10th installment from Peter Bowen. Each book has dealt with a different issue of current western life. Badlands centers around extremist fringe groups in the west, in this instance a religious group called Children of Yahweh (with a strong nod to Waco).

All the familiar faces are present in this book - FBI agents Harvey Weasel Fat, Pidgeon, and Ripper - shaman Bennetsee and his apprentice Pelon - and of course DuPre and Madeleine and DuPre's precocious granddaughter Pallas who is intent on marrying Ripper when she gets to be 16 in 4 or 5 years. Bowen is able to weave his characters into his plot with grace, hilarity and verve. However, if you are a new reader, it would be better to start with an earlier book. The patterns of action between the characters have been set in the earlier books and are often just tangentially referred to in this book, making it difficult for the new reader to fully grasp why events occur the way they do. For example, DuPre and Bennetsee have a most unusual relationship and their interaction, crucial to the plot, is only hazily revealed. I am still not sure if Bennetsee ever really physically appears in Badlands.

Another problem with this book for the first-time Bowen reader is that the mystery is not a mystery and there is no real resolution. The reader is presented with a cult taking over a large tract of land edging on the badlands of Montana. This cult is eventually found to have possibly stolen a large quantity of weapons from a military depot but this is only part of the threat to DuPre and his friends. It also comes out, in the last 20 pages of the book, that the cult is experimenting with viral diseases. At the end of the book the reader is unsatisfactorily left with an unidentified cult head, key leaders of the group who are either killed or missing, and the cult still occupying the land. While this may reflect a current sense of national disquiet (and seems pervasive in today's news stories), it is difficult on the mystery reader who likes things tied up and labelled at the end of a story. This lack of real ending is the reason I give the book a less than stellar five-stars.

But - long-time readers of Bowen will have few problems with the ending and no difficulties with the character interrelationships. The richness of characters is the driving force behind this series and this book does not disappoint. DuPre and Madeleine have once again graced our lives with their annual return - we can only hope for more.

Aficionados of Peter Bowen's Gabriel Du Pre mysteries already know that life is grim in the Big Sky Country. It doesn't matter whether you're a bankrupt rancher, a fiddler, or a member of the strange religious sect called the Host of Yahweh--they're sort of like the Amish on steroids with a bunker full of Kalashnikovs.

Bowen's detective-hero, Gabriel Du Pre is a laconic fiddler who lets his music and his deeds speak for him. He and his long-time mistress, Madelaine are Metis descendants of the French Voyageurs and Plains Indians.

Du Pre's rich friend Bart can't figure out why the bankrupt ranchers didn't come to him for help before selling their homestead to the Host of Yahweh. Then Du Pre and his FBI buddies discover that the rancher's family actually joined the secretive sect. Du Pre sneaks onto the Host of Yahweh's land to do damage to a man who is going to slaughter a band of wild horses. Then he stampedes their buffalo herd. Finally he blows up their weapons cache. In between all of these illegal goings-on, the Host of Yahweh invite all of their neighbors over for a barbecue.

Alas, it's a bit late to try and make friends with the very people who wish your weirdly-dressed church members had picked another state to live in. Preferably in the Netherworld.

"Badlands" is really a series of interesting, sometimes horrifying vignettes strung together in the fashion of a Montana tourist brochure, rather than a mystery with a plot. Du Pre gets caught in a buffalo stampede. He fashions Madelaine a pair of reading glasses, outrageously rhinestoned. The Feebees motor around in their jet-propelled helicopter. They arrest cult members. Cult members go free. Scores commit suicide. Several commit murder. Du Pre's granddaughter makes chocolate chip cookies for the FBI agent she is determined to marry, once she is of age. His name is Ripper and when he gets himself a Humvee, he says "It makes me want to invade something, Ireland, Iraq, Indiana...some foreign land." Two more cult members commit suicide. Bart and an undercover cop are infected with a mysterious virus. The book ends.

The medicine man, Benetsee has a wonderful time in "Badlands," actually saving Du Pre's life at least once. You will have a wonderful time, too as long as you can live without a plot or a definitive conclusion.