The Skull Mantra
Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780312204785 (0312204787)
Publish date: September 27th 1999
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
Pages no: 352
Edition language: English
Category:
Cultural,
Book Club,
Historical Fiction,
Mystery,
Religion,
Asia,
Thriller,
Mystery Thriller,
Crime,
Buddhism,
China
Series: Inspector Shan (#1)
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...
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