Mandarin Gate

Starred review from September 10, 2012
Edgar-winner Pattison dramatically portrays the bitter oppression suffered by the Tibetan people under Communist China in his excellent seventh novel featuring Chinese investigator Shan Tao Yun (after 2009’s The Lord of Death). Exiled to Tibet for having pursued the truth too zealously in an investigation that implicated high government officials, Shan now labors as an official ditch inspector. Even as his closest friend, Lokesh, believes that humanity’s failure to be humane heralds the “end of time,” Shan strives to protect the gentle Tibetan natives from victimization by their occupiers. His efforts to save Jamyang, an unregistered (i.e., “outlaw”) monk he befriended, from a bounty hunter, land Shan smack in the middle of a murder inquiry after the mutilated bodies of two unidentified men and one Tibetan nun turn up near an old convent. Shan must exercise his atrophied deductive muscles from his years as an investigator in Beijing to spare the Tibetans reprisals. Pattison movingly delineates the difficulties of seeking justice under a police state in this brilliantly constructed and passionate whodunit. Agent: Natasha Kern, Natasha Kern Literary.

November 15, 2012
A brutal killing in Tibet draws a veteran investigator out of the safety of his new bureaucratic job and into a complicated tangle of political interests and deadly alliances. Shan Tao Yun's journey to an abandoned convent, one supposedly filled with ghosts, infects him with memories of his many encounters with death, as well as imaginative nightmares that blur the line with the flesh-and-blood present. Shan has recently secured a safe, boring position as an inspector of irrigation and needs to keep a low profile if he wants to hold onto it. At the convent are a litter of corpses, including that of his friend Jamyang, who figures prominently in his nightmares. He retreats to a mountain perch from which he watches police swarm the site. The curiosity of the veteran investigator (The Lord of Death, 2009, etc.) is acutely piqued. He locates his philosophical old friend Lokesh, an official in the Dalai Lama's government before the Chinese invasion, who has also appeared in Shan's nightmares as a sage. Shan finds Lokesh nursing a frail, elderly lama. This man, who somehow knows about the killings at the convent, suggests that Jamyang was protecting something. Once Shan finds a list of Tibetan towns in Jamyang's pocket, he is pulled irresistibly into another intricate puzzle. Shan's probe requires him to reconstruct Jamyang's life, encounter bizarre characters like Genghis (who lives up to his famous namesake), and with Lokesh as Watson to his Holmes, walk a politically sensitive path. Casual readers be warned: Pattison's seventh Inspector Shan thriller is another hypnotic immersion in a fascinating culture.

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December 1, 2012

Don't miss Edgar Award-winning Pattison's seventh Tibetan case (after 2009's The Lord of Death). Inspector Shan must discover who would murder innocents on the grounds of a Buddhist temple, and also protect a witness.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2012
Pattison's storytelling prowess and commitment to exposing the truth about China's dismantlement of Tibet are as potent as ever in his seventh Tibetan mystery. His embattled hero Shan Tao Yun's Chinese ethnicity and former life as a Beijing investigator disguise his profound allegiance to Tibet, especially the few surviving monks, nuns, and lamas struggling to preserve the country's mountain-anchored spiritual traditions, though his tattoo marking him as a gulag survivor offers a clue. Always careful to steer clear of the Chinese authorities, Shan nonetheless snaps into full detection mode when a trio of gruesome murders takes place at a ruined convent. His risky investigation is complicated by the uncanny ability of a determined woman, a Chinese official, to appear at the direst of moments. The master of suspense stoked by humanitarian outrage, Pattison ratchets up his dramatic and soulful series with an embroiling plot involving a Chinese gang, a monk's shocking suicide, charming exiled professors, and a dissident computer hacker to reveal the Chinese government's newest and most diabolical mode of cultural annihilation in magnificent, much-violated Tibet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)