by Eliot Pattison
bookshelves: mystery-thriller Read in January, 2008 Superbly written but not a light flick-through. This is erudition with a capital E. Featuring Shan, the Canny Han. The corpse is missing its head and is dressed in American clothes. Found by a Tibetan prison work gang on a windy cliff, the gr...
Shan was a detective. He didn't work within the system and has ended up working on a road gang largely populated by Buddhist Monks whose attitude has infected Shan and induced him to embrace Buddhism. It is a surprise to him that he's made to investigate a murder, but he's certain that the monk t...
Inspector Shan Tao Yun is imprisoned for pissing off his superior in Beijing and is currently in a Tibetan gulag along with a ton of Tibetan monks. When the chain gang road crew discovers a headless body, Shan is forced by the warden to investigate. The mystery is very convoluted, intricate and ext...
I didn't dislike this, and he certainly writes well in describing Tibet, but I had trouble with it. I wasn't able to pick up on any of the clues, many of which were in the form of koans. The bits of the puzzle were like drops of water; shapeless, without defined edges, and completely transparent. ...
I really enjoyed this novel. A mystery novel that is much more than just a mystery novel. It's a good novel. Set in Tibet somewhere in the late XXe century. It takes the reader inside a prisoner labour camp in the region of Lhadrung. Political games, conspiracies, sacrifice and at the centre of it a...
Eliot Pattison's The Skull Mantra is an elegant literary mystery set in contemporary Tibet. This is an unusual setting for a detective novel yet the author fills it with detailed and knowledgeable information of the land, the people, and the religion. The novel can be read for either the mystery or ...
I just couldn't get into this book. It was so slow-moving and the descriptions of the torture just too horrific. It's too bad because it sounded like it would be right up my alley.
Superbly written but not a light flick-through. This is erudition with a capital E. Featuring Shan, the Canny Han.
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