Long Son : A Montana Mystery Featuring Gabriel Du Pre

Rating:
Summary: Good Bowen. Not the best, but good.
Review: Gabriel Du Pr? is definitely one of my favorite characters in fiction...as is Bart Fascelli. Anyone familiar with Bowen's writing will be right at home with Long Son. Readers looking for an introduction to Bowen would be better off starting with Notches or Wolf, No Wolf.

The story is, as usual, wandering. Readers who like to try and solve the mystery beforehand will be tested not by the complexity of the mystery but by the diversity of its elements. In the end, it's good Bowen, if not his best Du Pr? work. The stories of the M?tis are, as usual, well worth the read in and of themselves.

Regarding comments by Kirkus and other reviewers, a couple of items. First, the dialect is authentic, if only to a specific population of Montanans. Just because you don't recognize it doesn't make it nonexistent. Also, Montana does have a daytime speed limit. So I'm not sure where that criticism comes from.

Kirkus objects to the "wandering plot" and "casually obscene" conversation. I don't find that the plot wanders any more than Bowen's normal wont, and my daily conversations are no more "casually obscene" than Du Pr?'s. Maybe it's just where I'm from.

Good writer, good read. Money well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Good Bowen. Not the best, but good.
Review: Gabriel Du Pré is definitely one of my favorite characters in fiction...as is Bart Fascelli. Anyone familiar with Bowen's writing will be right at home with Long Son. Readers looking for an introduction to Bowen would be better off starting with Notches or Wolf, No Wolf.

The story is, as usual, wandering. Readers who like to try and solve the mystery beforehand will be tested not by the complexity of the mystery but by the diversity of its elements. In the end, it's good Bowen, if not his best Du Pré work. The stories of the Métis are, as usual, well worth the read in and of themselves.

Regarding comments by Kirkus and other reviewers, a couple of items. First, the dialect is authentic, if only to a specific population of Montanans. Just because you don't recognize it doesn't make it nonexistent. Also, Montana does have a daytime speed limit. So I'm not sure where that criticism comes from.

Kirkus objects to the "wandering plot" and "casually obscene" conversation. I don't find that the plot wanders any more than Bowen's normal wont, and my daily conversations are no more "casually obscene" than Du Pré's. Maybe it's just where I'm from.

Good writer, good read. Money well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Good Bowen. Not the best, but good.
Review: Gabriel Du Pré is definitely one of my favorite characters in fiction...as is Bart Fascelli. Anyone familiar with Bowen's writing will be right at home with Long Son. Readers looking for an introduction to Bowen would be better off starting with Notches or Wolf, No Wolf.

The story is, as usual, wandering. Readers who like to try and solve the mystery beforehand will be tested not by the complexity of the mystery but by the diversity of its elements. In the end, it's good Bowen, if not his best Du Pré work. The stories of the Métis are, as usual, well worth the read in and of themselves.

Regarding comments by Kirkus and other reviewers, a couple of items. First, the dialect is authentic, if only to a specific population of Montanans. Just because you don't recognize it doesn't make it nonexistent. Also, Montana does have a daytime speed limit. So I'm not sure where that criticism comes from.

Kirkus objects to the "wandering plot" and "casually obscene" conversation. I don't find that the plot wanders any more than Bowen's normal wont, and my daily conversations are no more "casually obscene" than Du Pré's. Maybe it's just where I'm from.

Good writer, good read. Money well spent.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderfully evocative read
Review: I do not understand the basis for the Kirkus reviewer's objections. The plot is in no way overly complicated, the language, "casually obscene" as it may be, fits the characters to a tee, and there are some of the most evocative descriptions that I have ever read. As an example, the description of Miss. Porterfield and the music box on pages 94 and 95 of the book left me in tears. I have known people like her. I also chortled out loud over the description of the blind owl that DuPre adopts. It still hunts and the descriptions of its successful hunts are both very funny and very true to nature.

I have just finished the book and I would like to say that it is the best of his works, and I have read them all. I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: Very good
Review: I have read and enjoyed all of Peter Bowen's novels. LONG SON is enjoyable for its unique writing style, the colorful language, the Montana setting, and the very likable characters.

Rating:
Summary: The evil that men do
Review: Sometimes a family can live like an unhealed sore in the body of a community, threatening to infect the innocent, generation after generation. In the case of the Messmer family, evil skipped a generation then returned full force to destroy what remained of the good.

This sixth Gabriel Du Pré mystery begins at an auction on the Messmer family ranch, about forty miles west of Toussaint. The current owners died in a road accident and the one remaining son is selling almost all of the moveable property. The FBI wants Du Pré to keep an eye on the ranch and the surviving son, but he resists the request of Harvey Wallace, aka Harvey Weasel Fat, Blackfoot and FBI agent:

"'I am old, tired, want to drink, sleep, play a little music,' said Du Pré. `You call, I get no sleep, drink too much, don't play music, maybe get shot at, something. Maybe I hang up, you call back I am gone, no one knows where.'"

Du Pré doesn't disappear but his friend, the Shaman Benetsee does (at least, temporarily). Something evil is afoot on the Messmer ranch, something so dangerous that Du Pré's long-time mistress, Madelaine decides to pay a visit to her Turtle Mountain kin. Du Pré, who is on the villains' hit list bunks up with his friends Bart and Booger Tom.

My problem with this Du Pré mystery is that "Long Son"s plot loses needed focus about half way through. The villains become more generic, as does their evil-doing. Du Pré puts his tracking skills to work at the ranch, and later at Benetsee's cabin, but his heart isn't really in the search---especially when it becomes clear that one of the villains has saved Du Pré's life.

Even as the plot tangles in on itself, the author, Peter Bowen moves from strength to strength in allowing his readers to experience the haunting, intensely familial, whisky-soaked lives of his Métis characters. `The Song of Genevette' is an old Métis ballad whose verses Du Pré must complete in order to find the murderer. It also leads him into the heart of the evil that seeped down through generations of Messmers, and caused their ultimate doom.

Rating:
Summary: The evil that men do
Review: Sometimes a family can live like an unhealed sore in the body of a community, threatening to infect the innocent, generation after generation. In the case of the Messmer family, evil skipped a generation then returned full force to destroy what remained of the good.

This sixth Gabriel Du Pré mystery begins at an auction on the Messmer family ranch, about forty miles west of Toussaint. The current owners died in a road accident and the one remaining son is selling almost all of the moveable property. The FBI wants Du Pré to keep an eye on the ranch and the surviving son, but he resists the request of Harvey Wallace, aka Harvey Weasel Fat, Blackfoot and FBI agent:

"'I am old, tired, want to drink, sleep, play a little music,' said Du Pré. 'You call, I get no sleep, drink too much, don't play music, maybe get shot at, something. Maybe I hang up, you call back I am gone, no one knows where.'"

Du Pré doesn't disappear but his friend, the Shaman Benetsee does (at least, temporarily). Something evil is afoot on the Messmer ranch, something so dangerous that Du Pré's long-time mistress, Madelaine decides to pay a visit to her Turtle Mountain kin. Du Pré, who is on the villains' hit list bunks up with his friends Bart and Booger Tom.

My problem with this Du Pré mystery is that "Long Son"s plot loses needed focus about half way through. The villains become more generic, as does their evil-doing. Du Pré puts his tracking skills to work at the ranch, and later at Benetsee's cabin, but his heart isn't really in the search---especially when it becomes clear that one of the villains has saved Du Pré's life.

Even as the plot tangles in on itself, the author, Peter Bowen moves from strength to strength in allowing his readers to experience the haunting, intensely familial, whisky-soaked lives of his Métis characters. 'The Song of Genevette' is an old Métis ballad whose verses Du Pré must complete in order to find the murderer. It also leads him into the heart of the evil that seeped down through generations of Messmers, and caused their ultimate doom.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult to read because of heavy dialect.
Review: Trying to decipher the heavy dialect is so difficult, that whatever story line that does exist, is lost. I've been to Montana and I've never heard that kind speech before. The authors credibility futher suffers because the main character is repeatedly stopped for speeding. It is not an uncommon fact that Montana has no speed limit.