Synopsis
Montana cowboy and fiddler, Gabriel Du Pre is asked by Paul Chase of the Smithsonian to record some of his Metis Indian ballads for the museum archives. Chase arranges for Du Pre to join him and a few others on a canoe trip in Canada, following the old fur trader route where the voyageurs sang their songs. What Du pre discovers about Chase, his companions, and himself, leads him on a journey through history, native myth, and the truth about a murder.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-03-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 7.3 in | | Width: | 4.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 4.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
Gabriel Du Pre begins a canoe expedition up a Canadian river. A run-in with an egomanical anthropologist on the trip leads Du Pre into an unsolved series of bizarre deaths of Native Americans. Now, back in Montana, a medicine man sees a terrible truth, a killer is out of control, with only one eccentric Metis Indian left to stop him--Du Pre. Martin's Press.
Industry Reviews
Bowen sustains interest in this follow-up to Coyote Wind despite the lack of a believable suspect, discernible clues or a precise sense of place. He relies on his unusual protagonist, Gabriel Du Pr?, a laconic rancher, fiddle player and self-mocking, part Native American freethinker given to abstract utterances. Lured from his native Montana to perform in a Washington, D.C., music festival, Du Pr? is fiddling when a young Indian woman dies, the first of several murders that occur in his trail. Each is committed with a primitive weapon; all are foretold by a shaman; in the vicinity, each time, is psychotic rich man and artistic hanger-on, Paul Chase. Yet all Du Pr? can do is wait for the shaman's next warning and follow his best hunches: that the killer's motive is pleasure, that Chase is being used for cover and that Du Pr? is the killer's real focus. It's often hard to locate Du Pr? as he is seen, variously, navigating a Canadian river, drinking with his lover Madelaine and playing with his grandchildren. But Bowen's prose is often droll and his characters well-etched; only clue seekers are in for a lean time here. (Apr.)
Bernstein
Bowen sustains interest in this follow-up to Coyote Wind despite the lack of a believable suspect, discernible clues or a precise sense of place. He relies on his unusual protagonist, Gabriel Du Pr‚, a laconic rancher, fiddle player and self-mocking, part Native American freethinker given to abstract utterances. Lured from his native Montana to perform in a Washington, D.C., music festival, Du Pr‚ is fiddling when a young Indian woman dies, the first of several murders that occur in his trail. Each is committed with a primitive weapon; all are foretold by a shaman; in the vicinity, each time, is psychotic rich man and artistic hanger-on, Paul Chase. Yet all Du Pr‚ can do is wait for the shaman's next warning and follow his best hunches: that the killer's motive is pleasure, that Chase is being used for cover and that Du Pr‚ is the killer's real focus. It's often hard to locate Du Pr‚ as he is seen, variously, navigating a Canadian river, drinking with his lover Madelaine and playing with his grandchildren. But Bowen's prose is often droll and his characters well-etched; only clue seekers are in for a lean time here. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly (03/06/1995)
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