Not many political thrillers are set in Tibet, and few can match the power and poetry of this debut novel by journalist Eliot Pattison. At the heart of the book is a forced labour camp where the Chinese imprison Buddhist monks and other local dissidents they've swept up since taking over Tibet. The prison also holds a few special Chinese prisoners--including Shan Tao Yun. This middle-aged man was once the Inspector General of the Ministry of Economy in Beijing, specialising in fraud cases. For reasons even he doesn't understand, he has been imprisoned and brutalised, and now spends his days breaking rocks on a road crew called the People's 404th Construction Brigade high in the Himalayas. Shan manages to survive under these harsh conditions thanks to the spiritual guidance of his fellow prisoners, but his precarious balance is threatened by the discovery of the headless body of a local Chinese official near a road construction site. The dead man's head soon turns up in a famous shrine--a cave that contains the skulls of heroic monks. The shrewd Red Army Colonel in charge of the district asks Shan to conduct an investigation: offers of better food and conditions are mixed with threats against his monk friends. Colonel Tan wants a fast resolution that implicates a mute, passive monk found near the cave, but Shan is certain that the man isn't guilty. More likely, killers include other high- ranking Chinese officials, as well as a pair of American mining entrepreneurs who had personal as well as financial dealings with the dead man.
By using a mountain of tiny details to make us believe completely in Shan and his perilous situation, Pattison creates a rare combination of excitement and enlightenment. --Dick Adler (Review copyright Amazon.co.uk)
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