The Skull Mantra: 1 (Inspector Shan Tao Yun) - Softcover

Pattison, Eliot

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312385390 ISBN 13: 9780312385392

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2008

Synopsis

Winner of the 2001 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, The Skull Mantra was a sensation when first published and received wide acclaim from critics and readers alike. The Skull Mantra is ranked as a novel about a people and a place--the Tibetans of the high Himalayas--as it is a gripping thriller.

The corpse is missing its head and is dressed in American clothes. Found by a Tibetan prison work gang on a windy cliff, the grisly remains clearly belong to someone too important for Chinese authorities to bury and forget. So the case is handed to veteran police inspector Shan Tao Yun. Methodical, clever Shan is the best man for the job, but he too is a prisoner, deported to Tibet for offending someone high up in Beijing's power structure. Granted a temporary release, Shan is soon pulled into the Tibetan people's desperate fight for its sacred mountains and the Chinese regime's blood-soaked policies. Then, a Buddhist priest is arrested, a man Shan knows is innocent. Now time is running out for Shan to find the real killer.

The Skull Mantra is the winner of the 2000 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

About this title

Review:

Once, Shan was the brightest investigator of financial corruption in Beijing; he asked the wrong questions and is serving an indefinite sentence in a labour brigade in Tibet where he has learned to love and revere the ageing monks who toil beside him. When the local prosecutor is found without his head, Shan is pulled from his barracks and obliged to investigate.

"On what grounds do you refuse, Comrade Prisoner?"

Shan did not reply. On the grounds that I cannot lie for you, he wanted to say. On the grounds that my soul has been worn to thin threads by people like you. On the grounds that the last time I tried to find the truth for someone like you I was sent to the gulag for my trouble...

Tan slowly drained his tea and shrugged. "Still, you are not permitted to refuse."

With Prosecutor Jao the fourth senior official to be killed, is there a Tibetan nationalist conspiracy? Or are the monks right to fear the return of Tamdin, demon of protective vengeance? And what is the role of the American geologists Rebecca and Kincaid? Shan is determined to find the truth before the army starts shooting his labour brigade, but wherever he turns he finds himself caught up in the contradictions of Chinese rule and his own conflicting loyalties...

This is a powerful and moving thriller whose polemic against Chinese rule in Tibet and admiration for the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism never takes over from breakneck tension and the slow deliberate unravelling of a complex and ingenious plot. The more we read, the more we are caught up in the cold chill of high plateaux and betrayal; we learn with Shan to trust nobody, and be surprised by unlikely virtue. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Like Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko, Shan becomes our Don Quixote, an apolitical guide through a murky world of failed socialism...Set against a background that is alternately bleak and blazingly beautiful, this is at once a top-notch thriller and a substantive look at Tibet under siege." --Publisher's Weekly (starred review) on The Skull Mantra

"It's rare when a mystery brings something fresh to the genre. Eliot Pattison has accomplished this with his Edgar Award-winning debut, The Skull Mantra." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Superb...breathlessly suspenseful." --Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0312385390
• ISBN 13: 9780312385392
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416