Bitter Creek

Description

"Bitter Creek is likely the top of the Du Pre series . . . Lively and absolutely fascinating" (Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall). Lt. John Patchen has come to Montana to persuade Chappie Plaquemines, his former gunnery sergeant in Iraq, to accept the Navy Cross. First, however, Patchen must find the wounded marine, who was last seen drinking heavily in the Toussaint Saloon. With the help of Gabriel Du Pre, who's romantically involved with Chappie's mother, he locates him soon enough, disheveled and stinking of stale booze. But a sobering visit to a medicine man's sweat lodge reveals a much greater mystery: The unsolved case of a band of Metis Indians who were last seen fleeing from Gen. Black Jack Pershing's troops in 1910, before disappearing. Strange voices within the sweat lodge speak of a place called Bitter Creek, where the Metis encountered their fate. To find it, Du Pre tracks down the only living survivor of the massacre, a feisty old woman whose memories may not be as trustworthy as they seem. But when Amalie leads Du Pre to Pardoe, an out-of-the-way crossroads north of Helena, he senses they're about to uncover long-buried secrets. Discouraged by the US military with their lives threatened by locals whose ancestors may have played a role in the murders, Chappie, Patchen, and Du Pre bravely pursue the truth so the victims of a terrible injustice might finally rest in peace. Bitter Creek is the 14th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Peter Bowen (b. 1945) is best known for his mystery novels set in the modern American West. When he was ten, Bowen's family moved to Bozeman, Montana, where a paper route introduced him to the grizzled old cowboys who frequented a bar called The Oaks. Listening to their stories, some of which stretched back to the 1870s, Bowen found inspiration for his later fiction. Following time at the University of Michigan and the University of Montana, he published his first novel, Yellowstone Kelly, in 1987. After two more novels featuring the real-life western hero, Bowen published Coyote Wind (1994), which introduced Gabriel Du Pre, a mixed-race lawman living in fictional Toussaint, Montana. He has written fifteen novels in the series, in which Du Pre gets tangled up in everything from cold-blooded murder to the hunt for rare fossils. Bowen continues to live and write in Livingston, Montana.

"[Bitter Creek] is the fourteenth Du Pre novel and the first in eight years, and it marks the return of a wonderfully eclectic and enjoyable series, of interest to western crime readers, especially those favoring Montana authors C. J. Box, Craig Johnson, and Keith McCafferty as well as fans of the Hillermans and other Southwest-set mysteries." -Booklist "Peter Bowen's Bitter Creek is likely the top of the Du Pre series, of which I've read all fourteen. It is a lively and absolutely fascinating look into Western history." -Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall "Peter Bowen writes mysteries that are truly mysterious-informed by Western legend, steeped in Indian superstition. . . . Riding with Du Pre is some kind of enchantment." -The New York Times Book Review "Du Pre joins a select group including Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, and Dave Robicheaux, characters that readers feel they've known all their lives. . . . Thought-provoking and always entertaining, this latest chapter in Bowen's ongoing Du Pre saga shows the author at the top of his form." -William Hjortsberg, author of Falling Angel and Manana "Bowen plays his language the way Du Pre plays violin: plaintive, humorous, wild, the sounds of the sentences as meaningful as the story." -The Washington Post Book World "Bitter Creek is Peter Bowen's unforgettable series hero Gabriel Du Pre at his fiddling, ditch-swilling, cruiser-tromping best." -David McCumber, author of The Cowboy Way and Playing Off the Rail "Peter Bowen is an American original. His mysteries are quirky and satisfying, while his diamond-cut prose slices clean to the bone." -Maryanne Vollers, author of Ghosts of Mississippi and Lone Wolf "In Bitter Creek, Peter Bowen's new Gabriel Du Pre mystery, a long-hidden treachery is unearthed and, by the skin of some teeth, put to rest. Hooray for Bowen's irascible and humane detective! Hooray for storytelling that is astringent, syncopated, comic, and utterly its own." -Deirdre McNamer, author of Red Rover "In Gabriel Du Pre, Peter Bowen has given the Metis a worthy hero in contemporary literature. Now, with Bitter Creek, we have a borderlands lagniappe of fourteen tales that collectively make their stand along the Montana Medicine Line (and in American letters) like a bison herd turned into a storm-fixed on the landscape of our imagination." -Nicholas Vrooman, PhD, Metis historian and author of "The Whole Country was . . . 'One Robe' ": The Little Shell Tribe's America