Badlands

A mysterious cult takes over a ranch in this western thriller starring a crime solver who “resonates with originality and energy” (Chicago Tribune).   The Eides have owned cattle in Montana since 1882, but a few days after they pull up stakes and sell their property, their homestead goes up in flames. When Métis Indian investigator Gabriel Du Pré arrives on the scene, nothing is left but the ashes. A serene young man appears, insisting the fires were set purposely and firmly asking Du Pré to leave. He is a representative from the Host of Yahweh, the millennial cult that has purchased the sprawling ranch on the edge of the Badlands, and arson is just the beginning of their suspicious behavior.   At first, the people of Toussaint try to ignore the secretive cult. But when Du Pré gets a tip from an FBI contact that seven Host of Yahweh defectors were recently shot to death, he takes another look at the glassy-eyed conclave. Behind their peaceful smiles, great evil lurks.  Badlands is the 10th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pré series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

“Du Pré may well be the most unusual character in mystery fiction. He’s illiterate, smokes too much, is never without his flask, gets pulled over when he’s not driving 30 miles over the limit (local cops worry he’s sick), and is by far the sharpest knife in the drawer.” —Booklist “It’s always a pleasure when a new Peter Bowen book arrives, and Badlands lives up to expectations.” —Rocky Mountain News “Gripping and humorous.” —Publishers Weekly

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 Pré, a mixed-race lawman living in fictional Toussaint, Montana. He has written fifteen novels in the series, in which Du Pré gets tangled up in everything from cold-blooded murder to the hunt for rare fossils. Bowen continues to live and write in Livingston, Montana.