Gabriel Du Pre Books in Order
Part ofPeter Bowen Books in OrderSee the Gabriel Du Pré books by Peter Bowen in order, with quick summaries, series background, and a handy guide to the best place to start.
Last updated: June 9, 2026
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Publication Order
15 books
Coyote Wind
by Peter Bowen
1994
A decades-old plane wreck in Montana holds three bodies, and one of them was murdered before the crash. Gabriel Du Pré follows the trail into buried family history and a land deal with long shadows.
Specimen Song
by Peter Bowen
1995
In Washington to play Métis music, Du Pré stumbles into the murder of a Cree singer. Back in Montana, more killings follow, each stranger than the last, and the killer seems to be circling closer.
Wolf, No Wolf
by Peter Bowen
1996
Fence-cutting activists push wolf politics into ranch country, then start turning up dead. As winter closes in and the national media arrives, Du Pré sees that the fight over wildlife has become something bloodier.
Notches
by Peter Bowen
1997
When mutilated young women are found along Montana's Hi-Line, Du Pré joins a desperate hunt for a serial killer. The case turns personal fast, and the clues suggest the nightmare may be even worse than it looks.
Thunder Horse
by Peter Bowen
1998
An earthquake uncovers an ancient burial ground, a dinosaur tooth, and a murdered archaeologist. Du Pré is pulled into a knot of tribal history, local greed, and questions the living would rather avoid.
Long Son
by Peter Bowen
1999
The bad son of a ranching family comes home to claim land no one trusts him with. As Du Pré looks into suspicious deaths, past and present begin to stack up around the Messmer ranch.
The Stick Game
by Peter Bowen
2000
Children on the Fort Belknap Reservation are getting sick, and a missing boy turns the fear into a murder case. Du Pré digs into whether a nearby gold mine is poisoning the land and the people.
Cruzatte and Maria
by Peter Bowen
2001
Du Pré signs on as historical adviser for a Lewis and Clark documentary, with his daughter Maria cast as Sacagawea. Then the props burn, bodies come out of the Missouri, and old arguments about who owns the West turn deadly.
Ash Child
by Peter Bowen
2002
Drought and wildfire are already pressing on Toussaint when an elderly woman is murdered and two teenagers vanish. Fresh out of the hospital, Du Pré chases the case into burning country and meth-fueled trouble.
Badlands
by Peter Bowen
2003
A secretive cult buys a ranch on the edge of Montana's badlands and immediately sets everyone on edge. When former members start dying, Du Pré goes looking for answers in a world built on fear and control.
The Tumbler
by Peter Bowen
2004
Rumors that Du Pré has found the lost journals of Meriwether Lewis bring rich outsiders and dangerous curiosity to Toussaint. When friends are attacked, he can no longer ignore the storm gathering around him.
Stewball
by Peter Bowen
2005
Aunt Pauline's latest husband vanishes, and Du Pré finds him shot dead in the brush. The trail leads to federal bait, illegal horse racing, and gamblers who are as ruthless as the country they hide in.
Nails
by Peter Bowen
2006
Pallas comes home, fundamentalist protesters roll into town, and an injured Iraq veteran arrives with trouble close behind. Graffiti, a missing girl, and rising tension tell Du Pré that several bad stories are colliding.
Bitter Creek
by Peter Bowen
2015
A search for a troubled former Marine opens onto a much older wound, the disappearance of a band of Métis people in 1910. Du Pré follows the case across generations, looking for the truth history buried.
Solus
by Peter Bowen
2018
A military whistleblower and his family need a safe place, and Du Pré agrees to shelter them in Toussaint. But powerful enemies are coming, and the town's battered peace may not hold.
Series background & context
Gabriel Du Pré is the heart of Peter Bowen's best-known series, and he is not a tidy detective. He is a Métis cattle inspector in eastern Montana, a fiddler, tracker, widower, father, grandfather, and sometime deputy, the kind of man who drinks whiskey ditches, says only what he means, and notices more than people think. He lives around the fictional town of Toussaint, where one killing can open into a century of history.
The setting matters as much as the crimes. Toussaint sits in a hard, wide country of ranches, bars, reservations, bad roads, river breaks, and weather that does not care how well prepared you are. Bowen writes that landscape as a working place, not a postcard. People raise cattle, remember grudges, go broke, play music, bury family, and keep track of who belongs and who is just passing through.
That is why the mysteries feel bigger than clues.
In book after book, Du Pré is pulled into trouble because the official systems around him are too small, too slow, or too blind. Coyote Wind starts with a long-hidden crime in an old plane wreck. Specimen Song sends him from a Smithsonian festival back to Montana with a killer in the background. Wolf, No Wolf, Notches, and Thunder Horse show how quickly local conflicts over wolves, women, land, archaeology, and tribal history can turn deadly.
The later books widen the frame without losing the town. The Stick Game looks at sickness and pollution near Fort Belknap. Cruzatte and Maria and The Tumbler bring in Lewis and Clark lore, filmmakers, treasure hunters, and wealthy outsiders. Badlands, Stewball, Nails, Bitter Creek, and Solus move through cults, illegal horse racing, modern war, old massacres, and corporate violence, but the core question stays the same, what happens to a place when bigger powers decide they can use it.
Du Pré does not work alone. Part of the fun of the series is the town around him, Madelaine Placquemines, his fierce longtime love, Benetsee, the old holy man, Harvey Wallace from the FBI, his daughters and grandchildren, bartenders, ranchers, drifters, and the friends who seem half comic until the danger gets real. Bowen gives them room to talk, argue, tease, and remember, so the books feel like community stories as much as detective novels.
They are funny, and then suddenly they are not.
If you are expecting neat police procedurals, this series does its own thing. The cases matter, but so do family ties, Métis history, music, land, and the push and pull between Native, ranching, federal, and outsider worlds. Start with Coyote Wind if you want to meet Du Pré from the beginning. Read on in order if you want to watch Toussaint deepen into one of those fictional places that starts to feel real.
Edited by
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