Peter Bowen, 74, author of Yellowstone Kelly, Du Pré books, dies

DAVID McCUMBER 17 hrs ago

eter Bowen, a novelist who found acclaim and literary success writing about the Montana he loved, died Wednesday after a fall at his home in Livingston. He was 74.

Bowen was best-known for a series of 15 mystery novels set in the fictional Eastern Montana town of Toussaint, featuring a Métis brand inspector named Gabriel Du Pré.

He also wrote a four-book series of historical novels set in Montana in the 19th and early 20th century that blended history and humor in a way that delighted readers and critics alike. They featured a fictionalized version of the real-life Western character Luther Sage “Yellowstone” Kelly, a soldier, frontiersman, hunter and scout.

Bowen was a writer’s writer, respected for his wordsmithing — and his irreverence and sardonic humor. For a time, he wrote columns for Forbes FYI magazine under the name “Coyote Jack.”

The writer Christopher Buckley, a pretty good hand at comic novels himself, was the editor at the magazine who commissioned the columns from Bowen, and said he knew he had a winner when he read the first line of the first column: "Sorry to be late in answering. I sprained my wrist on a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses." Indeed, the column became one of the magazine's most popular features.

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