Customer Reviews

Notches (Montana Mysteries)

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

 

 

Think Tony Hillerman liberally peppered with Cajun Hot sauce. After reading all the Montana mysteries now, I feel at home in Toussaint, Montana with Gabriel Du Pre, his rough-around-the-edges but sweetheart Madelaine; sobered up rich-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold Bart; crusty old Booger Tom; Benny and Susan Klein; Benetsee that shaman he remind me of Yoda and the rest of the rural Montana populace. If you're not careful you'll catch yourself thinking and talking with that DuPre Coyote French Metis clip. These are unique personalities with real voices that Bowen has pieced together. I feel as if I know them....like I want to hang with them at the bar and be there when Gabriel gets his fiddle out and makes that Metis music that draws the crowd and brings back the voyageurs; be around when the next bad thing happens and draws Gabriel and the others into figuring out whodunit. This is original work that's refreshing, honest, beautifully crafted and fun to read. I hope that Bowen he's home right now writing more mysteries from Montana.

Gabriel DuPre is my hero. He says and does what he wants and doesn't care what anybody thinks, he is his own man. When the mutilated and tortured bodies of several young girls and women start turning up around Toussaint, Montana, the FBI calls on Gabriel to help them solve the cases. Madelaine, Gabriel's spitfire of a girlfriend, adds fuel to the fire by telling Gabriel to find the killer and protect her girls.

Even if you don't agree with everything that Gabriel believes in or does, he will make you think. You will love this book.

"Notches" is the fourth mystery in Bowen's series that features Gabriel Du Pré, Métis descendant of the French Voyageurs and Plains Indians.

There are reasons police might not want Du Pré at the scene of a crime. He spits a lot as he circles the corpse, rolls his own cigarettes and mashes them out beneath his boot heel. A forensic specialist would find traces of him all over the scene. In "Notches," he even hides evidence because he wants to track a killer without interference from the FBI.

On the plus side, nothing at the scene escapes him. If he is called in to examine one body, he may find two others near by that no one else has noticed--which is exactly what occurs in "Notches." Someone has been killing girls and dumping them "like old guts in the brush for the coyotes to eat," according to Du Pré's long-time mistress, Madelaine.

There are two serial killers on the loose in "Notches" which makes for a confusing plot. There are also two FBI agents who add to the scenery, but don't do much more than engage in slanging matches with Du Pré, who after all is said and done isn't even a policeman, merely a part-time brand inspector. Madelaine finally presses Du Pré into tracking the killers down when her own daughter runs away from home.

Du Pré is laconic to the point of partial sentences, but the interrupted staccato of his speech is a perfect counterpoint to the harsh Montana landscape and to the sometimes abbreviated lives of its inhabitants. Over 150 corpses form an even grimmer than usual backdrop to Du Pré's musings on the long history of his people and the land. This book is not so much a murder mystery as it is a complex landscape of hell from the pen of a Montanan Hieronymus Bosch.

Brilliant weaving of many elements: Du Pre's sense of honor, his Metis family and friends descendents of French voyageurs and their Indian wives, Bowen's caring about a country and a people and telling it all radiantly. As usual, as well as all the familiar characters, those in for only a short time are well-drawn.

A textbook on how to write.

Read in chronological order, as characters develop as the books procede.

This was the first Gabriel Du Pre mystery I read. I understand that this isn't the first book in the series, but I would have appreciated a brief character introduction. At the end of "Notches", I am left with a bunch of questionmarks.

How come Du Pre has so much money? Did he win the lottery in an earlier book? Or was his late wife independently wealthy?

What's with the Pidgin English? Is that the author's attempt at Metis dialect?

Why are people allowed to trample all over the crime scenes? Why does Du Pre touch items that could be evidence with his bare hands? Isn't he a retired investigator or cop or something and should know better?

Du Pre seems to drink a lot. How can be drink so much and still think clearly? Is he an alcoholic?

Why do stories involving Native Americans always have some sort of ESP and/or mystical element (Benetsee talking through the Man-With-No-Name and materializing basically out of thin air at the end of the story)?

Does anybody else see something wrong with the fact that Du Pre - spurred into action by his lover Madelaine - basically takes the law into his own hands (well, he and the trucker)?

As to the storyline: I may be exceptionally dumb, but I couldn't follow how Du Pre figured out who the first killer was. (Or maybe the fact that English is my second language makes it more difficult for me to understand the author's English.)

Overall I am quite ambivalent about this book. It is written in an unsual way, which I found interesting, especially Du Pre's thoughts and feelings when he is making music. On the other hand, I felt irked by many lengthy descriptions that added neither to the atmosphere nor to the story: Du Pre went hither and did this. There he rolled a cigarette. He smoked. He dropped the cigarette butt, then he went thither. There he did that, then he rolled a cigarette. Then he retrieved his bottle of whiskey. He took a drink. He smoked. He looked at the eagle in the sky. - ???

Also, in my opinion, Du Pre, a character who, in his own words, runs on sex, smokes, and music, makes a strange cop (or whatever he is). From the way he thinks and talks, what he thinks/talks about, and the way he communicates with others, you think the guy can't add up one and one, yet he is the one who figures out who the killers are. It doesn't quite fit.