Coyote Wind and Specimen Song: The First Two Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du Pre [Paperback]

It took me awhile to get into the first book, but I did. The author switches viewpoints a lot which took me awhile to get used to. Once I did, it was great.

In the second book he picked up right where he left off. The characters are the same and the author seems to be more in tune with the characters (things flow more smoothly in my opinion).

Both stories are your generic murder mysteries with Indian superstition thrown in. In the first one Du'pre is trying to find out who killed his new friends brother 25 years ago. In the second one, someone is killing Indians in Washington DC. Bart, his new friend, falls in love with a detective in DC and Du Pre solves the mystery. Well I should say he takes justice into his own hands.

If you like interesting characters this series is great.

"Coyote Wind" is a darn near perfect specimen of a mixed-genre mystery cum western. Gabriel Du Pré is laconic, honorable, and wise to the ways of the Big Sky Country---a throwback to the noble cowboy-hero of Zane Grey's novels. He is a vulnerable hero, a Métis descendant of the French Voyageurs and Plains Indians. He has problems with his teenage daughter, who has shaved off part of her hair and dyed the rest of it a weird color. His mistress won't marry him because in the eyes of the Church, she is still married to the sleaze who deserted her many years past. He is plagued throughout the book by an alcoholic Métis prophet.

Du Pré's voice is unique, and perfect for this story. His dialogue is short, punchy, flicked with mordant barbs---an arrow in your heart when you are least expecting it. Two chapters into the book, found myself talking, thinking like Du Pré. Sounds like this:

"Du Pré knelt, looked, crossed himself. Some days he didn't believe in God, but he did believe in crossing himself.

"Maybe this let you sleep now," said Du Pré. He picked up the white skull, the color of the giant puffball mushrooms that came up in pastures in the wet years. The mushrooms were bigger, and startling in the green.

"'Now I got someone's head in my hands, I thinking on frying mushrooms,' Du Pré said aloud. 'Dumb bastard'."

The mystery of who killed whom in "Coyote Wind" is fairly easy to unravel once you get to know and care about the characters. It almost had to occur, considering the people involved. It becomes more important to see if Du Pré can help a friend stop drinking, rather than to figure out who murdered his friend's brother. As Du Pré keeps telling everyone who will listen: "I ain't a cop...I am a [brand inspector]."

Nevertheless, it is Du Pré who is tapped to solve a thirty-year-old murder. He goes about it in a style that is perfectly tuned to his character. Not a single false note from Du Pré or his fiddle.

"Coyote Wind" is a very satisfying read.

"Specimen Song" features the same cast of characters as its predecessor. However, their personalities are exaggerated to the point of disbelief. The Métis prophet performs magic tricks. Du Pré goes jaunting back and forth to Washington D.C. in his friend's private jet, after turning the brand inspection business over to his son-in-law. He also canoes through the Canadian taiga, following the river route of his Voyageur ancestors. All of this traveling is in search of a killer, but somehow Du Pré seems more blustery than heroic when he is removed from the land where he can read the turn of a leaf.

Or the body language of an enemy.

I very much hope that Du Pré returns to Big Sky Country in volume III.