Stewball (Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre) [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Peter Bowen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2005 | Series: Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre

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.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Bowen's winning 12th Gabriel Du Pré novel, the Montana lawman agrees to help his Aunt Pauline find her current husband, Badger, who's gone missing. Du Pré contacts his FBI friend, Harvey Wallace, who shows him a photo of Badger, shot dead at the base of the skull execution-style. And that's just the beginning of an investigation that involves a racehorse named Stewball, treasonous government agents and two, or possibly three, charred corpses in a plane. None of this seriously discomfits Du Pré, who remains as relaxed as ever, even in the face of illegal horse racing and a scalping. As in previous Du Pré books, the fast-paced narrative offers ample doses of local color, evenly spaced bursts of violence and an unforced, laid-back style. While this contemporary western mystery breaks no new ground, it rewards with its pleasing lack of pretension. (Apr. 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Badger wasn't a bad guy; he just fell in with the wrong folks and got busted running illegal quantities of prescription drugs down from Canada. The FBI agent who busted him hoped he could lead the feds to the bigger fish in the prescription-drug racket, but Badger ends up with a bullet in his brain. The FBI agent is Harvey Wallace, longtime confederate of Gabe Du Pre, the retired Montana brand inspector and sometime lawman. Turns out Badger was married to Gabe's cousin, so Harvey asks Gabe if he'd like to help catch the bastards who did it, who may be a gang of bent ranchers using the drugs to dope racehorses. Gabe, in turn, enlists the aid of Booger Tom, an ancient cowboy, and Lourdes, his horse-whisperer granddaughter. And, of course, to get into the races, you have to have a horse. That would be Stewball. The twelfth entry in the Du Pre series is as consistently entertaining as its predecessors. Gabe, ever skeptical of the modern world and its institutions, places his faith in people, the land, a hand-rolled smoke, and the occasional ditch-water highball. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031227730X
• ASIN: B000VYV89M
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,919,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars terrific Montana mystery, March 30, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stewball (Gabriel Du Pre Mystery) (Hardcover)

Gabriel Du Pre meets with his Aunt Pauline at the Toussaint Saloon. She tells him her latest husband Badger has gone missing for two weeks and that the FBI is somehow involved. She wants him to call his FBI friend to find out what happened to her spouse. Du Pre does exactly that and finds Badger was caught coming across the Canadian border with ten thousand valium tablets. Badger agreed to infiltrate a white supremacist and the charges against him will be greatly reduced.

There is heavy gambling at these races and the FBI supplied him with marked money that turned out to be counterfeit. The group killed Badger but the Feds still wants someone to infiltrate the urban theorist group. Du Pre has his granddaughter ride a horse in the races in the hopes that he will be accepted by the group and learn who the real leaders are. It is a dangerous situation but Du Pre has it under control until the leader escapes during an FBI raid. Du Pre is determined to be the one to find him no matter how long it takes.

Du Pre is a unique, independent and ageless protagonist who goes his own way and doesn't let anyone stop him from doing what he wants. It is lucky for law enforcement that he is on the side of Justice because he would make an untouchable crook. Peter Bowen does for Montana what Tony Hillerman does for New Mexico. Perhaps the most delightful character in this novel is STEWBALL, the horse that is in love with Du Pre's granddaughter Lourdes.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stewball's fast paced and perfect Gabriel du'Pre, August 5, 2005

By 

Linda Johnson "eclectic reader" (Mandan, ND United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stewball (Gabriel Du Pre Mystery) (Hardcover)

All of Peter Bowen's books are a fast, furious, and a fun read, including Stewball. I love Gabriel's friends and family. I also love the focus on Metis and their culture, because I am familiar with it, and also with the geographic areas the stories tend to be set in. The characters are pretty much like real people seen though a sardonic eye, with a bit of poetic license thrown in. They are real enough to draw you into their concerns but exaggerated enough to make it fun. May the ink never dry in Mr. Bowen's pens.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ole Stewball was a racehorse, December 17, 2005

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stewball (Gabriel Du Pre Mystery) (Hardcover)

I was as puzzled by this book's ending as I have been with all of Peter Bowen's endings since "Ash Child." I finished it, but I felt like I'd been dragged through a séance in the sweat lodge with the inscrutable Benetsee. Maybe the meaning of "Stewball"s conclusion will come to me in a dream.

At least the rich neo-nazi ranchers come out of this book nearly as whupped as the readers. Not that I think they don't deserve a good bashing, but I wasn't quite sure what the evil rancher intended to do with his vintage World War II P-38. He goes wooshing around in it at the end of the book, but he has no specific target that the readers need to worry about like an NAACP Convention or an American Civil Liberties Union picnic or a Navaho Tribal Council.

Nobody out on the prairie, Mr. Blackmore, except us chickens. We're all Aryan chickens so don't be pointing those cannons at us.

Oh well, I get the feeling the author wrote "Stewball" on automatic pilot. It consists mainly of non-expletive-deleted dialog between characters from his previous books. Luckily, Bowen provides an index of characters at the beginning of this book; otherwise new readers will never be able to figure out who's who.

Booger Tom, one of my favorite characters from previous novels in the Du Pré mystery series, gets lots of face time in "Stewball." He is pretending to be a race horse trainer. Bowen also clues us in on this old ranch hand's background: he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor at Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, and also fought in France and Austria in WWII.

This old guy should be writing his memoirs, not mending barbwire and worming cows!

Anyway, Du Pré, the retired brand inspector and Booger Tom team up to race an Australian Quarter Horse named Stewball in brush races attended by neo-nazi ranchers. Du Pré's FBI buddy, Harvey Wallace asks them to discover who murdered one of his snitches, who was passing counterfeit money at a brush race. The snitch also happened to be married to one of Du Pré's aunts.

That's about all the plot there is. Benetsee holds a couple of séances in his sweat lodge and dons his war paint. Du Pré laces on his Cree running moccasins and rubs dirty engine oil on his face. He shoots a couple of bad guys with his MP-40, sets fire to a bunch of aviation fuel drums, and drinks a whole lot of bourbon.

Stewball wins a few races.

That's it, except for some long-winded, expletive-not-deleted lectures on the American far-right.

P.S. Mr. Bowen, if Stewball is a blue roan, he has a black mane and tail, not gray or white.