Thunder Horse (Montana Mysteries) [Mass Market Paperback]

Peter Bowen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Montana Mysteries | Publication Date: March 1999

Bocolic Toussaint, Montana, isn't easily rattled, but an earthquake and a foreign developer threatening to turn the quaint town into a trout farm shakes up life for the locals. So too does the discovery of an ancient burial ground with the well-preserved bones of a primitive people. And when an archeologist is found with a bullet in his back and a dinosaur tooth in his pocket, sometime sleuth Gabriel Du Pre steps in with the wisdom and vision of his half-French/half-Metis Indian ancestors to uncover the answers. But while Indians, archeologists, and entrepreneurs battle for valuable land and the precious remains of a dinosaur, a predator more dangerous than the great T.Rex walks the Montana plains, hungry to strike again...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fans of Peter Bowen's gloriously unbridled books about Montana's Gabriel Du Pre have cause to celebrate with Thunder Horse. The part-Medis Indian cattle-brand inspector and occasional deputy sheriff gets involved in a story of murder and greed that links the ancient Indian residents of Montana (and an even older inhabitant, Tyrannosaurus Rex--the titular "thunder horse") with a present-day Japanese consortium's plans to turn a bucolic spring into a commercial trout farm. Along the way, Du Pre drives his old pickup too fast along Montana's back roads, drinks gallons of cheap wine with a brace of fascinating friends, plays his fiddle, and resonates with originality and energy. Past Du Pre tales in paperback include Notches, Specimen Song, and Wolf, No Wolf. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Montana cattle-brand inspector Gabriel Du Pre is banging on the door of archeologist Aaron Morgenstern's apartment in the historic Baxter Hotel, the tallest building in Bozeman. The old man who opens the door asks Du Pre: "Are you the goddamned Red River Breed with the damn dinosaur tooth that fool Burdette called me about?" The growing legion of fans of Bowen's first four Du Pre books (most recently, 1997's Notches) will recognize the tone and the territory. After a serious earthquake shakes up the local topography, Du Pre, the part-Metis Indian who frequently serves as deputy to county sheriff Benny Klein, gets involved in a story of greed that links ancient Indian residents of Montana with a present-day Japanese consortium's plans to turn a bucolic spring into a commercial trout farm. There's a murder too: a snowmobiler is shot while carrying a valuable fossilized tooth of a T-Rex. Along the way, Du Pre gets to drive his old pickup too fast along Montana's back roads, drink gallons of cheap wine with a brace of fascinating friends (including his wise lover, Madelaine, and a wonderful old rascal called Benetsee who's part medicine man and part con man), play his fiddle and radiate an immensely charming sense of enhanced reality. Idiosyncratic, convincing and marked by thoroughly distinctive rhythms of dialogue, Bowen's Du Pre series claims unique territory in the genre.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312968876
• ISBN-13: 978-0312968878
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,435,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An atmospheric mystery that is positvly mesmerizing, April 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Thunder Horse (Hardcover)

An earthquake strikes an area near Bozeman, Montana where the Japanese had begun a development project to turn a local spring into a trout farm. However, the plan is placed on hold because the quake reveals that the land is an ancient Native American burial ground.

Soon, a more modern corpse is found in the area. A snowmobiler, carrying a dinosaur tooth, has been murdered. An archeologist claims the tooth is valuable because it is that of a T-Rex, of which there are very few complete skeletons. Part-time deputy Gabriel Du Pre begins to investigate the killing as well as attempting to short circuit the growing hostility between the Japanese and the Native Americans. As he gets closer to the truth about the murder, Gabriel places his own life in jeopardy.

In his fifth Du Pre mystery, Peter Bowen continues to scribe one of the freshest and unique regional who-done-it series on the market today. The characters are all genuine and fun as they charmingly represent the local lifestyle. The story line is fast-paced and even the use of local dialogues fails to slow the action down for a minute. THUNDER HORSE, its predecessors, and Mr. Bowen's other series (Yellowstone Kelly) are all entertaining reads.

Harriet Klausner

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "They sang. They didn't talk.", April 14, 2005

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thunder Horse: A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre (Paperback)

Once upon a time I read Bowen's Gabriel Du Pré stories because they were good mystery stories. Then I read them because I loved the characters. Then I read them because, by de-romanticizing the Northwest they had created a whole different vision of life in a land well beyond my ken. Now I read them because of all of those things - there is always some gemlike bit in the story that catches my imagination. Thunder Horse is like a boxful of those moments.

Du Pré is a Metís Indian, member of a subculture that has existed before there were clearcut boundaries and fences. It is a composite culture, often ignored, but of great richness and importance in American history. It was the Metis, after all, who led Lewis and Clark west, who carried the furs to market, and learned to play a music which can compel the most somnolent to toe tapping.

Many peoples have crisscrossed the north of Montana, not just the Metís, and Thunder Horse is about the most ancient of these, the Horned Star People, who came across the land bridges 15,000 years ago. A gravesite is discovered in Du Pré 's country on land destined to become a dude trout fishing in the middle of nowhere. When bones from a Tyrannosaurus Rex are also found Du Pré quickly realizes that the trout are just a ruse and the new owners are really looking for a dinosaur skeleton worth millions. And the Horned Star dead are just a nuisance to the hunters. Even in Toussaint, Montana, big money means big trouble. In no time flat a more modern victim is found.

The real mystery isn't the murder, though, but the intricate relationship between the pieces of a millennia old puzzle. Dinosaur bones, 15,000 year old Caucasian skeletons, and local Indian practices from as late as the past century all blend together into a story that is half anthropology and half a deeper mysticism that us modern guys from Detroit can really only guess at. Bowen manages to bring is together into a story that is as funny as it is respectful of the deepest of values. I find myself inhaling the story at one gulp and then desperately wanting more.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ancient bones, August 18, 2001

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: Thunder Horse (Montana Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

The `Thunder Horse' of the title is Tyrannosaurus Rex, although it could also refer to the earthquake that starts out this fifth Gabriel Du Pré mystery with a bang.

All of the regulars are at the Touissant Bar listening to Du Pré make sad Voyageur music on his fiddle, when the Big One rumbles in. It doesn't seem fair that Montana should have avalanches, grizzlies, Alberta Clippers, and earthquakes, but I guess it keeps the outlanders from swarming all over the scenery.

Unlike the wholesale carnage in "Wolf, No Wolf," only one outlander on a snowmobile is murdered in "Thunder Horse." This murder, plus an assault on his friend Bart force Du Pré back into his role as a reluctant detective. He gets the usual amount of playful misdirection from the Shaman Benetsee, practical advice from his mistress, Madelaine, and homicidal commentary from the ancient Booger Tom.

The earthquake shifted mountains, dried up springs, uncovered bones---17,000 year-old human skeletons of a Caucasian people that Benetsee calls the Horned Star Folk.

How did the shaman know that a horned star amulet would be found among the bones? How old is Benetsee, anyway? Is he the enigmatic Walker in the Snow?

T Rex bones mix in with the skeletons of the mysterious Horned Star Folk, along with a yellow, radioactive uranium clay that was once used for face paint. Du Pré alternates between hard drinking, hallucinatory sweat baths, and journeys through the eerie and death-dealing badlands of Montana before he can begin to work out how these three things fit together---and how the completed pattern points to a killer.

"Thunder Horse" is one of the best of the Du Pré mysteries. Peter Bowen's Montana badlands are haunted by the people who once lived there---Norwegian homesteaders; Crow; Cheyenne; the Métis descendents of Voyageurs; the Horned Star folk who paddled down long-vanished rivers from the Arctic. Their bones and legends are the heart of this mystery.