Badlands

Rating:
Summary: Little plot, lots of color
Review: Aficionados of Peter Bowen's Gabriel Du Pre mysteries already know that life is grim in the Big Sky Country. It doesn't matter whether you're a bankrupt rancher, a fiddler, or a member of the strange religious sect called the Host of Yahweh--they're sort of like the Amish on steroids with a bunker full of Kalashnikovs.

Bowen's detective-hero, Gabriel Du Pre is a laconic fiddler who lets his music and his deeds speak for him. He and his long-time mistress, Madelaine are Metis descendants of the French Voyageurs and Plains Indians.

Du Pre's rich friend Bart can't figure out why the bankrupt ranchers didn't come to him for help before selling their homestead to the Host of Yahweh. Then Du Pre and his FBI buddies discover that the rancher's family actually joined the secretive sect. Du Pre sneaks onto the Host of Yahweh's land to do damage to a man who is going to slaughter a band of wild horses. Then he stampedes their buffalo herd. Finally he blows up their weapons cache. In between all of these illegal goings-on, the Host of Yahweh invite all of their neighbors over for a barbecue.

Alas, it's a bit late to try and make friends with the very people who wish your weirdly-dressed church members had picked another state to live in. Preferably in the Netherworld.

"Badlands" is really a series of interesting, sometimes horrifying vignettes strung together in the fashion of a Montana tourist brochure, rather than a mystery with a plot. Du Pre gets caught in a buffalo stampede. He fashions Madelaine a pair of reading glasses, outrageously rhinestoned. The Feebees motor around in their jet-propelled helicopter. They arrest cult members. Cult members go free. Scores commit suicide. Several commit murder. Du Pre's granddaughter makes chocolate chip cookies for the FBI agent she is determined to marry, once she is of age. His name is Ripper and when he gets himself a Humvee, he says "It makes me want to invade something, Ireland, Iraq, Indiana...some foreign land." Two more cult members commit suicide. Bart and an undercover cop are infected with a mysterious virus. The book ends.

The medicine man, Benetsee has a wonderful time in "Badlands," actually saving Du Pre's life at least once. You will have a wonderful time, too as long as you can live without a plot or a definitive conclusion.





Rating:
Summary: Veiw it as a novel first, a mystery second
Review: As noted by another reviewer, there really isn't much mystery in this book, but there is one heck of a good story. Like any good serial, a mysterious cult, shadowy leader, stolen arms, and murder are all just a framework for the characters to act around. I will say that the death of the woman on the four-wheeler hit me as particularly disturbing, and I wish we had gotten a little more about Bart's kidnapping, but all in all the story satisfied and stayed true to the series.
Not all questions get answeres, and not all plotlines get neatly tied off, but that seems to be part and parcel of Bowen's style.
As always, those familliar with the series will get more from the book than a first time reader.
I really enjoied seeing the relationship develope between Pallas and Ripper, as well as the interplay between Ripper and Harvey. Who is Pidgeon in love with? Will Pallas grow up and join the FBI - pushing Harvey into early retirement and chasing Ripper back to Brazil?
I eagerly await the next instalment.

Rating:
Summary: Whoops.
Review: I'm a big fan and have followed the du Pre series since its beginning, but I can't help feeling disappointed in this one. It was seriously flawed. At first, I couldn't tell what was wrong with the cult portrayed, except that they dared move to Montana - even later, the cultists weren't really filled in, it was hard to tell just who they were or what they were like - the dialogue was often hard to follow - and the end was extremely unsatisfying; it left too many unanswered questions.

I remember reading an interview with novelist Robert B. Parker in which he said that his first draft was pretty much what got published, and I couldn't help feeling like the same was true here, and what it needed was another polish. In fact, it needed a whole new ending.

Don't get me wrong - I'll read every one of these that Mr. Bowen cares to write, they are that rewarding - but if you're curious and want to try one, don't start here.

Rating:
Summary: Whoops.
Review: I'm a big fan and have followed the du Pre series since its beginning, but I can't help feeling disappointed in this one. It was seriously flawed. At first, I couldn't tell what was wrong with the cult portrayed, except that they dared move to Montana - even later, the cultists weren't really filled in, it was hard to tell just who they were or what they were like - the dialogue was often hard to follow - and the end was extremely unsatisfying; it left too many unanswered questions.

I remember reading an interview with novelist Robert B. Parker in which he said that his first draft was pretty much what got published, and I couldn't help feeling like the same was true here, and what it needed was another polish. In fact, it needed a whole new ending.

Don't get me wrong - I'll read every one of these that Mr. Bowen cares to write, they are that rewarding - but if you're curious and want to try one, don't start here.

Rating:
Summary: refreshingly original
Review: In Toussaint, Montana, the townsfolk host a going away party for a family who owned a ranch for over a century, but forced to sell to the well funded The Host of Yahwah. A white priest leads the cult and decrees his followers will be picked up by alien spaceships just before the world is destroyed.

Gabriel DuPre learns through his FBI contacts that seven men who left the cult were all killed on the same day at the same time in various places around the country by female members. Gabriel tries to help a woman trying to escape but when she sees that members of the cult are about to capture her, she kills herself in front of her children. When Gabriel sneaks into the compound and sets fire to an ammunitions dump, the resulting explosions are enough to get the FBI involved. The FBI surrounds the compound but nobody wants another Waco so the Federal agents are prepared to wait them out until Gabriel comes up with an idea to break the back of the resistance.

The tenth installment in this series is refreshingly original due in large part to the protagonist who though a grandfather fourteen times over, lives life to the fullest. He is not afraid to take chances and puts his life on the line to try and get some information on the cult that can be used by the FBI. In BADLANDS the federal agents are the good guys who act with restraint while the cult members pursue their sinister agenda. Peter Bowen does for Montana what Tory Hillerman does for New Mexico.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: refreshingly original
Review: In Toussaint, Montana, the townsfolk host a going away party for a family who owned a ranch for over a century, but forced to sell to the well funded The Host of Yahwah. A white priest leads the cult and decrees his followers will be picked up by alien spaceships just before the world is destroyed.

Gabriel DuPre learns through his FBI contacts that seven men who left the cult were all killed on the same day at the same time in various places around the country by female members. Gabriel tries to help a woman trying to escape but when she sees that members of the cult are about to capture her, she kills herself in front of her children. When Gabriel sneaks into the compound and sets fire to an ammunitions dump, the resulting explosions are enough to get the FBI involved. The FBI surrounds the compound but nobody wants another Waco so the Federal agents are prepared to wait them out until Gabriel comes up with an idea to break the back of the resistance.

The tenth installment in this series is refreshingly original due in large part to the protagonist who though a grandfather fourteen times over, lives life to the fullest. He is not afraid to take chances and puts his life on the line to try and get some information on the cult that can be used by the FBI. In BADLANDS the federal agents are the good guys who act with restraint while the cult members pursue their sinister agenda. Peter Bowen does for Montana what Tory Hillerman does for New Mexico.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Another Peter Bowen Classic - But don't Begin with this One
Review: The ongoing saga of Gabriel DuPre and his extended family/network of friends is superbly continued in this 10th installment from Peter Bowen. Each book has dealt with a different issue of current western life. Badlands centers around extremist fringe groups in the west, in this instance a religious group called Children of Yahweh (with a strong nod to Waco).

All the familiar faces are present in this book - FBI agents Harvey Weasel Fat, Pidgeon, and Ripper - shaman Bennetsee and his apprentice Pelon - and of course DuPre and Madeleine and DuPre's precocious granddaughter Pallas who is intent on marrying Ripper when she gets to be 16 in 4 or 5 years. Bowen is able to weave his characters into his plot with grace, hilarity and verve. However, if you are a new reader, it would be better to start with an earlier book. The patterns of action between the characters have been set in the earlier books and are often just tangentially referred to in this book, making it difficult for the new reader to fully grasp why events occur the way they do. For example, DuPre and Bennetsee have a most unusual relationship and their interaction, crucial to the plot, is only hazily revealed. I am still not sure if Bennetsee ever really physically appears in Badlands.

Another problem with this book for the first-time Bowen reader is that the mystery is not a mystery and there is no real resolution. The reader is presented with a cult taking over a large tract of land edging on the badlands of Montana. This cult is eventually found to have possibly stolen a large quantity of weapons from a military depot but this is only part of the threat to DuPre and his friends. It also comes out, in the last 20 pages of the book, that the cult is experimenting with viral diseases. At the end of the book the reader is unsatisfactorily left with an unidentified cult head, key leaders of the group who are either killed or missing, and the cult still occupying the land. While this may reflect a current sense of national disquiet (and seems pervasive in today's news stories), it is difficult on the mystery reader who likes things tied up and labelled at the end of a story. This lack of real ending is the reason I give the book a less than stellar five-stars.

But - long-time readers of Bowen will have few problems with the ending and no difficulties with the character interrelationships. The richness of characters is the driving force behind this series and this book does not disappoint. DuPre and Madeleine have once again graced our lives with their annual return - we can only hope for more.

Rating:
Summary: Benetsee Sang
Review: When a series closes in on a dozen volumes, the challenge to the author is to keep his characters believable and avoid repetitive formulas. In other words the author must find new ways of being creative while each new book adds more constraints to the overall story. Truth be told, I know of no author who manages this with complete ease. Thus many of the contributing factors of Badlands will be familiar to Peter Bowen's more loyal readers, while newcomers will find the story completely original.

Thus one can predict that Gabriel Du Pre, Metis Indian and frequent agent of a higher justice will be lectured by his mate Madelaine, manipulated by Benetsee the Shaman, and stubbornly determined to try his own way first. He and his own are the truest natives of northern Montana, living at peace with the other long term residents of Toussaint and jealously guarding the inner nature of a lifestyle that still reflects the wilderness about them.

When The Host of Yahweh, a yuppie religious cult, mysteriously descends on Toussaint and proceeds to build a closed community at a local ranch, this gets a lot of attention. Especially when they show signs of killing of the local wild horse herd as pests. Benetsee and Du Pre step in, and soon the violence escalates. The FBI believes that the Host is implicated in the simultaneous killing of 7 ex-members, Du Pre is enlisted and an investigation that is more like a small war ensues.

There really isn't a mystery here other than how Du Pre will manage to overcome the Host, but there is a lot of Bowen's warm respect for the Metis Indians. He captures beautifully the strange English dialect that is part fractured French grammar, part salty word selection, and part sheer attitude. Du Pre is surrounded by characters that Bowen generally keeps entertaining us, even if they are not always using fresh material. Benetsee steals the book this time with his own magical mystery tour. As Bowen writes, "Him, he will make his joke. Always does. Us, we get to be the punch lines."

I would advise starting earlier than this volume in the series, not because it can't stand on its own, but because of the amount the previous volumes contribute to the context.