Book 7

The Stick Game

by Peter Bowen

Published 9 April 2000

Book 9

Ash Child

by Peter Bowen

Published 1 April 2002
When an eccentric old woman is found dead in her living room, her head beaten in with a hatchet. Gabriel Du Pre feels compelled to look into the matter. While searching for answers at the scene of the crime, Du Pre spies two teenagers snooping around the house. Meanwhile it's dry season, and fires blazing west of Toussaint have spread to the Wolf Mountains. Du Pre suspects the fires have been intentionally set, and his suspicions are heightened when the same two teenagers are found dead in the mountains, buried beneath ash and riddled with bullet wounds.

Book 14

Bitter Creek

by Peter Bowen

Published 1 January 2015
"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.