Review by Booklist Review
Inspector Shan has been living a dangerous double life during China's brutal occupation of Tibet, ever since The Skull Mantra (1999), the first in Pattison's politically, spiritually, morally, and emotionally inquisitive series. Shan survived incarceration as a political prisoner with the help of similarly imprisoned Tibetan Buddhist lamas. Upon his release, he was relegated to a remote rural outpost that, nonetheless, has attracted dramatic clashes between the ruthless, well-armed Chinese and the poor yet resourceful Tibetan resistance, which Shan secretly supports. In the tenth and final installment, Shan investigates the deaths of an archaeology professor and his American student and tries to stave off the student's enraged father, who turns out to be a former FBI agent with unnerving knowledge and skills. Their entangled quests center on a massive dam project that threatens one of Tibet's most sacred valleys. Once again, Pattison summons majestic landscapes, intriguing cultural details, and unusual characters while pitting action against reflection, the old against the new, greed against faith, and ambition against love and compassion in a tightly braided plot that reveals the depth of Tibetan suffering and resilience. As a parting gift, Pattison grants his brooding hero a sunbeam of hope. Unique in its setting, cast, predicaments, concerns, meditativeness, and mysteries both human and divine, the Inspector Shan series is vital, relevant, and complexly affecting.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar winner Pattison incorporates the political realities of Tibetan life under Chinese occupation into a page-turning whodunit in his 10th Shan Tao Yun mystery (after 2017's Skeleton God). Shan was once a respected inspector in Beijing, until he investigated "the wrong people" and was exiled to a Tibetan prison. After he provided unofficial help to the area's governor, Colonel Tan, he was released and given constabulary duties. Needing Shan's help again, Tan promotes him to special inspector to facilitate his inquiry into the Five Claws Dam, the biggest construction project the Chinese government has ever made in the region. Meanwhile, Shan is forced to witness the execution of Metok Rentzig, an engineer assigned to the project, who was charged with corruption. Shan finds evidence that Metok was framed and judicially murdered, perhaps to cover up others' culpability in the deaths of two archeologists who were attempting to protect Tibetan antiquities from destruction at the dam site. Pattison has never been better in depicting a brave man's dangerous pursuit of justice in a "land of broken places and broken people." Agent: Natasha Kern, Natasha Kern Literary. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
When he suspects murder and a coverup by the Chinese government, Inspector Shan Tao Yun must tread carefully for his own safety.Why has officious governor Col. Tan summoned the veteran detective (Skeleton God, 2017, etc.) to Tibet's Lhadrung County? Why has he forced Shan to watch in amazement as Tibetan prisoner Metok Rentzig is executed? And why has he obliged Shan to accept the newly invented position of "Special Inspector for the County Governor's Office" and then abruptly abandoned him, leaving him the assignment of fixing this "land ofbroken people"? Left on his own, Shan soon realizes that the executed man was not a criminal at all but a witness to the mysterious death of American graduate student Natalie Pike and Chinese archaeologist professor Gangfen in a car crash. This intelligence, along with a series of suspicious industrial "accidents" at the local hydro project known as The Five Claws, prompts Shan to investigate further despite qualms about his own safety. He learns that Rentzig had followed up on the car crash, sending photographs to officials in hope of provoking an investigation. Natalie's father claims she was apolitical, but Shan realizes that the archaeologist was involved in preventing the Chinese government from destroying a Tibetan holy site that was unfortunately in the same place as Five Claws. The closer Shan gets to exposing the truth, the more dangerous Tibet becomes for him.Pattison's tenth and final Inspector Shan novel is a pitch-perfect series ending, leaving readers with a satisfying last look at the scrupulously ethical investigator as well as further insight into a recent era of Asian history little known in the West. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
