Du Pré investigates a gold mining company whose pollution might be poisoning the children of a nearby reservation
Something is rotten in the Fort Belknap Reservation. Life has always been tough on this barren stretch just south of the Canadian border, but now the children are dying. While playing his fiddle in a reservation bar, part-time deputy Gabriel Du Pré meets an accordionist who suspects that the children’s health defects and low test scores are connected to the nearby Persephone mine.
Meanwhile, Du Pré investigates the disappearance of one of the afflicted children. When the boy turns up dead, the accordionist’s theory gains credence. It wouldn’t be the first time that the rich men of Montana found wealth at the expense of the reservation’s children.
Bowen has that rare ability to write sparsely but with great clarity drawing the reader in to the story This review is for the entire series which I have read and recently reread all fourteen books. Bowen has that rare ability to write sparsely but with great clarity drawing the reader in to the story. Few other authors have this – the one that comes most to mind is Robert B. Parker. Like Parker, he is able to build and make real great characters, admittedly some of them writer’s cliches, but still very effectively done. He is also able to capture the gestalt of a place like Montana, which…
Big Sky Country Comes To Life Gabriel Du Pre, protagonist-in-chief of these Montana Mysteries is a flawed man. The writer has chosen to make him (and the other characters that romp through these stories) well aware of the fact. This is a lesson in Montana geography of thousands of years into the past and the lives of the people that have been there, are there and are coming into this special “middle-of-nowhere” place. You learn of the danger that the present day western states face from private and corporate…
One of the most disappointing of the 9 Montana mysteries I read It is hard to decide how to review these Gabe Du Pre mysteries. Gabe and everyone else around him seems to live a life of “eat-more-beef,” “drink whiskey while driving,” and drive well above the speed limit. It is at once a simpler lifestyle and a thumb in the eye of authority of all kinds. Californians and environmentalists are the ill-informed and despicable enemies and Gabe, who works as a brand inspector, has a life in which he always has enough money (about which he…