Ash Child

Description

In modern-day Montana, brushfires, meth dealers, and murder challenge a deputy in a mystery that's "a pleasure to read" (Publishers Weekly). In the midst of a drought in Toussaint, Montana, Metis Indian tracker and cattle investigator Gabriel Du Pre learns that Maddy Collins has been killed-and goes looking for answers. Du Pre suspects a pair of boys who, despite their good upbringing, have fallen in with a gang of crystal meth dealers. Not long after the murder, they vanish. As the town is threatened by a forest fire, Du Pre puts his own life at risk to hunt for the two young men, not knowing whether they're alive or dead. But if the inferno reaches Toussaint, no one will be safe. Ash Child is the 9th 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.

"[Du Pre's] lusty appetites and salty speech account for the irresistible earthiness in Peter Bowen's Montana mysteries." -The New York Times "A pleasure to read." -Publishers Weekly "Wonderful . . . wise . . . Hilarious." -The Washington Post Book World "Bowen tells his story in short, perfectly crafted scenes. The dialogue, the relationships, the Montana landscape, and, most of all, the quirky and memorable characters are all matchlessly drawn." -The Denver Post "[A] dazzling entry in a wonderful series . . . The Du Pre stories are about a vanishing way of life and the determined souls who fight a rear-guard action to keep it alive." -Booklist, starred review