Synopsis
Former inspector general of the Ministry of Economy in Beijing, Shan Tao Yun is now a road laborer in what is now Chinese-occupied Tibet. With the help of the Buddhist monks who work and share living space with him in the Tibetan gulag, Shan's spiritual strength helps him survive his physical and emotional hardships. When Shan discovers the headless body of a local official, a shrewd, conniving colonel orders him to find the killer or else risk the brutal deaths of the monks. While the colonel has already pegged an innocent monk as the prime suspect, Shan smells conspiracy. As this unlikely investigator conducts his search for the killer through a twisting political labyrinth, readers may get a concise look at Tibet under siege.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-03-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 6.8 in | | Width: | 4.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 7.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
Critical acclaim ranks THE SKULL MANTRA with Gorky Park and Smilla's Sense of Snow as a novel as much about a people and a place--the Tibetans of the high Himalayas--as it is a gripping thriller. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, author Eliot Pattison masterfully scales the heights of the genre, taking readers to the top of the world while he chills us to the bone...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 Beijing. 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...in an astonishing, emotionally charged story that will change the way you think about Tibet--and freedom--forever.
Industry Reviews
"There is no faster way to get under the skin of a country in turmoil than with the needle of a murder investigation. Nothing I've read or seen about how China has systematically crushed the soul of Tibet has been as effective as THE SKULL MANTRA, a debut thriller by a veteran journalist."
Chicago Tribune - Dick Adler (09/19/1999)
"Pattison debuts with this superb whodunit that leads an alienated Chinese detective to a cabal of hypocritical bureaucrats, meditating monks, and meddlesome Americans in contemporary Tibet....Breathlessly suspenseful tour of a dangerous and exotic landscape, where opposing forces, political and magical, give way to an eerie, mystical truth."
Kirkus Reviews (08/15/1999)
"I've seldom read a novel that more effectively captures the soul of its setting, in all of its contradictions, difficulties and beauty."
(08/20/2009)
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