Crime and / or mystery fiction

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis“A terrific writer . . . Thunder Horse makes this reviewer want to race to the bookstore for the rest of the Gabriel Du PrÉ series” (Rocky Mountain News). Usually it takes more than one beer to make the Toussaint Saloon shake. When the earthquake hits, part-time deputy Gabriel Du PrÉ and his friends are lamenting the fishing resort a Japanese firm has planned for their small town. The floor trembles, the lights go out, and glass rains from the walls. When they emerge from the bar, they see a new landscape. Roads are mangled, mountains have shifted, and the spring where the Japanese businessmen had planned to build their resort is no more. In its place is an uprooted Indian burial ground—and a massive headache for Du PrÉ. As local Native American tribes fight over the ancient remains, a fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth is found in the hands of a murdered anthropologist. Du PrÉ had just wanted a beer. Instead he found a murder sixty-five million years in the making.Thunder Horse is the 5th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.Trade Review“Strange, seductive . . . Haunting . . . The wonder of these voices is that they are also blunt and crude, soaked in whiskey and raspy from laughter, but still capable of leaving echoes.” —The New York Times Book Review “Seductive . . . blunt and crude, soaked in whisky and raspy from laughter, but still capable of leaving echoes.” —The New York Times “Idiosyncratic, convincing and marked by thoroughly distinctive rhythms of dialogue, Bowen’s Du Pré series claims unique territory in the genre.” —Publishers Weekly “Hilarious as the satire often is, what makes these stories so rare is the byplay among the natives. . . . Thunder Horse is a wise tale of the land that wears its idealism as casually as a pair of old jeans.” —The Washington Post Book World

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Book SynopsisA Montana deputy takes on a mining company that’s poisoning reservation children in a novel the Washington Post calls “wonderful [and] wise.” Something is rotten in the Fort Belknap Reservation. Life has always been tough on this barren stretch just south of the Canadian border, but now the children are getting sick. While playing his fiddle in a reservation bar, part-time deputy Gabriel Du PrÉ meets an accordionist who suspects the children’s health defects and low test scores are connected to pollution from the nearby Persephone gold mine. Meanwhile, Du PrÉ investigates the disappearance of one of the afflicted children. When the boy turns up dead, the accordionist’s theory gains credence. It wouldn’t be the first time the rich men of Montana found wealth at the expense of the reservation’s kids. But is there something more than greed and indifference at work? Something even more sinister? Du PrÉ will make it his business to find out. “In other hands, melodrama could easily rear its head and trample the scenery, but Bowen has a firm grip on his large cast of interesting players . . . [in this] tale of grace vs. greed” (Publishers Weekly).The Stick Game is the 7th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.Trade Review“In other hands, melodrama could easily rear its head and trample the scenery, but Bowen has a firm grip on his large cast of interesting players, and what emerges is something quieter and more believable: a poignant, often funny tale about grace vs. greed.” —Publishers Weekly “Bowen’s rock-hewn hero is a solid man with lusty appetites. . . . [Du Pré] rarely departs from the present tense of language—and of life.” —The New York Times “Wonderful . . . wise . . . Hilarious as the satire often is, what makes these stories so rare is the byplay among the natives.” —The Washington Post Book World

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Book SynopsisA deputy discovers Meriwether Lewis’s journal in this modern-day mystery by an author who “writes about the rural West better than anyone” (Rocky Mountain News). When he’s asked to serve as a consultant for a documentary about the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark’s expedition up the Missouri River, Gabriel Du PrÉ’s impulse is to flee. Eastern Montana isn’t accustomed to getting much attention, and its residents prefer it that way. But the director of the film is dating Du PrÉ’s daughter Maria, so this hard-bitten fiddler’s hands are tied. The MÉtis Indian lawman agrees to act as a guide and help the filmmakers navigate the river, which is as deadly now as it was in 1805. The Missouri has claimed nine lives in the past three years—a suspiciously high death toll the FBI wants Du PrÉ to investigate. While trolling the riverbanks, Du PrÉ stumbles upon a national treasure: Meriwether Lewis’s lost journals, which the American government will do anything to get back. Meanwhile, when members of the film crew start dying, Du PrÉ begins to wonder if the locals hate outsiders so much they might be willing to kill to keep them out. “Bowen’s exuberant storytelling mines the rich cultural history of the West . . . [and features] delightfully extravagant characters” (Publishers Weekly).Cruzatte and Maria is the 8th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.Trade Review“Bowen’s exuberant storytelling mines the rich cultural history of the West . . . [and features] delightfully extravagant characters.” —Publishers Weekly “Over eight outings now [Du Pré] continues a relentless march to his own drummer.” —Kirkus Reviews “Finely crafted Montana scenery.” —Library Journal

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Book SynopsisIn modern-day Montana, brushfires, meth dealers, and murder challenge a deputy in a mystery that’s “a pleasure to read” (Publishers Weekly). In the midst of a drought in Toussaint, Montana, MÉtis Indian tracker and cattle investigator Gabriel Du PrÉ learns that Maddy Collins has been killed—and goes looking for answers. Du PrÉ suspects a pair of boys who, despite their good upbringing, have fallen in with a gang of crystal meth dealers. Not long after the murder, they vanish. As the town is threatened by a forest fire, Du PrÉ puts his own life at risk to hunt for the two young men, not knowing whether they’re alive or dead. But if the inferno reaches Toussaint, no one will be safe.Ash Child is the 9th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. Trade Review“[Du PrÉ’s] lusty appetites and salty speech account for the irresistible earthiness in Peter Bowen’s Montana mysteries.” —The New York Times “A pleasure to read.” —Publishers Weekly “Wonderful . . . wise . . . Hilarious.” —The Washington Post Book World “Bowen tells his story in short, perfectly crafted scenes. The dialogue, the relationships, the Montana landscape, and, most of all, the quirky and memorable characters are all matchlessly drawn.” —The Denver Post “[A] dazzling entry in a wonderful series . . . The Du PrÉ stories are about a vanishing way of life and the determined souls who fight a rear-guard action to keep it alive.” —Booklist, starred review

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Book Synopsis“Peter Bowen does for Montana what Tony Hillerman does for New Mexico” (Midwest Book Review). Gabriel Du PrÉ’s aunt Pauline has burned through more than her share of husbands, so it’s no surprise when she shows up in Toussaint complaining that the latest one, Badger, has run off. Du PrÉ, the MÉtis Indian fiddler, retired cattle inspector, and sometime deputy, agrees to go looking for her man. He finds him shot, execution-style, in the wilds of the Montana countryside. A chat with his contacts at the FBI reveals that Badger, a small-time drug smuggler, had been working for them since his last arrest. Pauline’s husband was bait, but the big fish got away. The last lead was to a cabal of wealthy gamblers who pass their time racing horses in the barren Montana brush. To infiltrate their tight-knit syndicate, Du PrÉ goes undercover, lining up his own horse and jockey. He must tread lightly, because horses are not the only things these men shoot. Gabriel Du PrÉ’s foray into the world of illegal horse racing is “as consistently entertaining as its predecessors. [Du PrÉ], ever skeptical of the modern world and its institutions, places his faith in people, the land, a hand-rolled smoke, and the occasional ditch-water highball” (Booklist).Stewball is the 12th book in The Montana Mysteries Featuring Gabriel Du PrÉ series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.Trade Review“As in previous Du Pré books, the fast-paced narrative offers ample doses of local color, evenly spaced bursts of violence and an unforced, laid-back style.” —Publishers Weekly “Consistently entertaining.” —Booklist “Bowen tells his story in short, perfectly crafted scenes. The dialogue, the relationships, the Montana landscape, and, most of all, the quirky and memorable characters are all matchlessly drawn.” —The Denver Post

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Book SynopsisA Boston PI tries to help a musician friend—and find a murderer—in this “gripping” mystery by an Anthony Award–winning author (Publishers Weekly). Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is “the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine” (New York Post). She may be Boston’s most tenacious private detective, but by night, Carlotta Carlyle is just another cab driver hustling for an honest buck. When blues superstar Dee Willis climbs into her cab, Carlotta isn’t starstruck—she’s shocked. The two women were friends in college, right up until the day Dee ran off with Carlotta’s husband. Now Dee is back in town to play a sold-out concert and Carlotta is too surprised to introduce herself—or to wonder why her old pal is asking to be dropped off in one of Boston’s roughest neighborhoods. After saving the blues diva from being ripped to shreds, Carlotta agrees to help her track down an old friend. Soon, a blackmail plot concerning stolen song lyrics is uncovered and a corpse is found in Dee’s hotel room. Carlotta will have to work fast to keep her old friend from becoming yet another casualty of the blues. Steel Guitar is the 4th book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.Trade Review“Another of Barnes’s superb mixes of warmth, enthusiasm, clever plotting, vivid characters, and overall brio.” —Kirkus Reviews “The most refreshing, creative female character to hit mystery fiction since Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone.” —People “Cleverly plotted and zestfully related. . . . A characteristically gripping tale, packed with taut, energy-charged images.” —Publishers Weekly “Carlotta—tall, vivacious, sensitive—unravels all the knots with breathtaking verve, leaving the reader gasping for more. Super.” —Library Journal “Carlotta is terrific company.” —The New York Times

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Book SynopsisHired to find a missing novelist, Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle gets tangled up in a cutthroat political campaign Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is “the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine” (New York Post). Thea Janis was a literary Mozart. She published her first novel at age fourteen, shocking the upper crust of Boston with her frank depiction of blue-blooded indiscretions, and she seemed to have a magnificent career ahead of her. But before Thea could publish her follow-up novel, she mysteriously disappeared and was eventually named as a victim of a serial killer. Twenty-four years later, an admirer of Thea’s comes to Carlotta claiming to have evidence that Thea is alive—and still writing. He begs Carlotta to find the onetime prodigy, but there are powerful people, including Thea’s prominent family of Boston politicians, who want Thea’s second book to stay buried. As a take-no-prisoners gubernatorial race speeds to its climax, Carlotta discovers a secret that could upend the campaign, endanger people’s lives, and rewrite literary history.Cold Case is the 7th book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.Trade Review“With a stylish pro like Barnes doing the plotting, this chilling case won’t leave you cold.” —People “An intricate, whodunit-and-why…Barnes is an adroit storyteller and she makes her large cast of interesting characters come alive.” – Chicago Tribune “Absorbing . . . Barnes keeps readers flipping pages.” —Orlando Sentinel “Barnes is a master storyteller, and her latest—in a series that just keeps getting better—is a riveting read that is at once poignant, funny, sad, suspenseful, and hopeful. A must for every mystery fan!” —Booklist “A satisfying, complex tale.” —Entertainment Weekly

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Book SynopsisA medical conference becomes a murder scene, in this mystery starring a doctor in rural Scotland by the author of Shooting Pains. Dr. Cathy Moreland welcomes the chance to stay at a country hotel for an advanced life support course. But the atmosphere among her fellow practitioners seems fraught with tension—and the equipment meant for saving lives is instead used to kill a bad-tempered doctor. He will not be the only one to die—and when Cathy discovers that intimidating notes were being sent to the attendees, including one that calls Cathy herself out for an unethical act in the past, she must find out who may have broken an oath to do no harm . . .

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Book SynopsisHow well does she really know this man? A teacher becomes a target, in this intense new thriller by the author of Unravelling Alice. Alexandra couldn’t help herself. She fell madly in love with married man Ryan, the father of her pupil Mia. When he stopped calling, her heart was broken—and she consoled herself with an acquaintance named Henry. But neither man is really out of her life. Henry wants more. And she can’t avoid running into Ryan at school. Before long, Alexandra is caught between two men. When she discovers her actions will have a greater effect on her future than she could have ever imagined, Alexandra also finds out that one of the men has been manipulating the truth—and that she is now in mortal danger.

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