The Stick Game (Gabriel Du Pre Mystery) [Paperback]

Peter Bowen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Gabriel Du Pre Mystery | Publication Date: April 15, 2004

With their exceptional characterizations, evocative setting, and smartly plotted mysteries, Peter Bowen's Montana novels have always fascinated readers and critics alike. In The Stick Game, Bowen's lyrical, spare writing carries us once again to a part of the country few of us know much about.

The latest installment in this unique series finds amateur sleuth and cattle rancher Gabriel Du Pre uncovering the dirty secrets of an industrial gold mine and searching for a troubled teenage boy. At a trading fair in rural Montana, Du Pre and his longtime love Madelain run into Jeanne now worries about the disappearance of her sixteen-year-old son, Danny. Meanwhile, Du Pre befriends a musician from Fort Belknap Reservation who introduces him to disturbing parallels between the huge incidence of birth defects in the Indian population there and the activities of the persephone gold mine located near the reservation. With some reluctance, Du Pre agrees to look into both problems.

But then Danny's body is found in a well, and Du Pre discovers a link between the boy's life and what goes on at Fort Belknap. Working with a doctor who's long been concerned about Persephone's practices, Du Pre dangerously confronts the indifference and recklessness of the industrial mine.

Perfectly capturing the cadences of Metis life, Peter Bowen beautifully depicts the people and landscape of remote Montana.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gabriel Du Pre, the fiddle-playing Native American detective, is back in a seventh Montana mystery. This time Du Pre is enlisted by his lover Madeline to look into the disappearance of the teenage son of her old childhood friend Jeanne. Like Jeanne's other children, and many more youngsters on the Fort Belknap Reservation, Danny suffers from mental and physical problems that seem to Du Pre to be connected with the activities of Persephone, a gold mining operation adjacent to reservation land. When Danny turns up dead, Du Pre enlists the aid of his wealthy and well-connected friend Bart Fascelli, who in turn brings a retired mining executive into the search for proof of Persephone's illegal activities.

Du Pre is a complex and interesting protagonist with a strong if troubled relationship with his Indian heritage and an almost mystical connection to the land. There's hardly any mystery involved; the mining company is identified as the villain early on, and Du Pre's efforts to pin responsibility on Persephone take second place to the detailed exposition of Native American customs, rituals, and dialect; the expertly evoked ambiance of the harsh Montana environment; and the well-drawn minor characters, particularly Bart, Madeline, and Billy Gourard, a young Native American boy whose final futile effort to make the mining company accept responsibility for its crime provides the denouement. A welcome addition to the Western mystery genre, The Stick Game will be eagerly snapped up by fans of Tony Hillerman and Nevada Barr. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The Stick Game--a combination of brazen bluff, shrewd guesses and inspired storytelling played by teams from various Native American tribes--is an apt metaphor for Bowen's seventh book (after 1999's Long Son) about crusty Montana crime-solver Gabriel Du Pr?. Gabe's father was a Meti s, a member of one of the area's oldest tribes, and Gabe wears his ethnic history like a warm coat. Besides being an expert fiddler, a cattle inspector and part-time deputy sheriff, he's a consumer of large quantities of whiskey, hand-rolled tobacco and red meat. Bowen blends all these qualities into such a seamless whole, bringing to life a memorable, fallible human being, that a certain lack of heft in the plot and a sometimes meandering narrative don't seem to matter as they might in a lesser writer's work. At the Crow Fair in the bleak town of Hardin, Gabe and longtime ladyfriend Madelaine meet her cousin, whose oldest son has disappeared, and he agrees to help out. Soon after, a crippled accordion player asks Gabe to do something about the poisoned water that caused the accordion player's birth defects. Both investigations lead to a gold-mining operation that provides many local jobs. In other hands, melodrama could easily rear its head and trample the scenery, but Bowen has a firm grip on his large cast of interesting players, and what emerges is something quieter and more believable: a poignant, often funny tale about grace vs. greed. Gabe's playing a tune he has written called "Billy Drank the Gold," about a dead boy poisoned by toxic waste, is more powerful than any environmental diatribe. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (April 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312326149
• ISBN-13: 978-0312326142
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #976,532 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Stick Game, April 3, 2000

By 

PEG LOTVIN (Gardiner, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stick Game (Montana Mysteries) (Library Binding)

Great book, a little out of the ordinary for Bowen as there is very little mystery, but the discussion of the ways the West is being used up for the profits of BIG BUSINESS while the residents, both Native American and the latecomers who love it is worth the price.. The fate of Du Pre's old police cruiser is a highlight not to be missed.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Worst of Bowen, May 21, 2001

By 

Norma Dancis (Rockville, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stick Game (Montana Mysteries) (Library Binding)

Madalaine, his lover, persuades Gabriel Du Pre, Montana fiddler and occasional detective, to discover how the Persephone Mine is destroying the health of those who live on the nearby reservation. It is obvious that something is seriously amiss, but nobody has been able to pin it down. Du Pre finds poison springs, but no evidence as to how they arose. His wealthy friend, Bart, provides expert help in the person of two retired mining engineers to help Du Pre bring the mine to justice. Bowen fails badly with this book, perhaps because he cares so much about the problems he exposes. The book contains plenty of information but very little plot development. Tired and boring repartee is supposed to divert attention from the holes in the action. Bowen has written six previous books, all excellent. Buy one, or even better, all of them, and skip The Stick Game.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Double Poison, November 13, 2001

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Stick Game (Montana Mysteries) (Library Binding)

Aficionados of Peter Bowen's Gabriel Du Pré mysteries already know that life is grim in the Big Sky Country. It doesn't matter whether you're a ranch hand, a fiddler, a rich alcoholic, or just passing through. In fact the LL Bean-clad, Volvo-driving Yuppie tourists are the ones who usually take it on the chin, although Bowen only inflicts them with a verbal barrage in "The Stick Game." He is concentrating on more serious targets: alcoholism; and the mysterious illnesses, mutations, and deaths of children and animals on the Fort Belknap Reservation.

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

Du Pré's rich friend Bart is also unusually laconic in this seventh mystery in the series. Most of his lines consist of one-word expletives. However, Bart's language can be excused since he is very stressed out by his friends' rude jokes about his new lady friend, not to mention the realization that he owns millions of dollars of stock in a local gold mining company that is injecting poisons into the water table.

In what might be the most cheerful scene in "The Stick Game," Du Pré blows out the transmission on his old police cruiser, loses his brakes and goes shooting through a series of downhill, hairpin turns at eighty miles an hour. He and Madelaine narrowly miss an oncoming eighteen-wheeler, go twanging through a barbwire fence, and finally slow to a stop in a rancher's stock pond:

"The water was only two feet deep.

"Du Pré mopped at his face with a greasy towel that lived on the floor of the cruiser. He could see.

"'Hey, Du Pré,' Madelaine laughed, `That was some fun yes! I am paying two dollars that ride at a carnival! Hah! We have good luck!'

"'S__t,' said Du Pré."

These are some tough people in Bowen's book. I think you'll end up feeling good about the life-affirming way that his characters deal with their problems. Rich Uncle Bart helps smooth the way for some, but this is a barbwire book---you'll find it poking you in some unexpected places.