The Skull Mantra - Softcover

Pattison, Eliot

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099409798 ISBN 13: 9780099409793

Publisher: Arrow, 2000

Synopsis

'Summoning is a dangerous thing. To the old Buddhists, words were the most dangerous weapon of all.'

Shan Tao Yun is a former investigator for the chinese government who once got a little too close to the truth. Now he breaks rocks in a Tibetan prison camp high in the Himalayas. Only the remarkable courage of the Buddhist monks who are his fellow prisoners give him the will to survive.

But when a smartly dressed headless corpse is discovered on the bleak moutainside, Shan is forced to become a detective once more. And as he uncovers a web of intrigue involving a beautiful American mining engineer, Tibetan sorcerers, corrupt Chinese officials and the Buddhist Resistance, he begins to realise that far more than his own survival is at stake.

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:

"Vivid, absorbing, intriguing" (Sunday Telegraph)

"A cocktail of action adventure...a great read" (Guardian)

"Complex, crammed with Tibetan and Buddhist lore and legend, and utterly fascinating" (Daily Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099409798
• ISBN 13: 9780099409793
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464