Bones of the Earth

January 15, 2019
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 of...broken 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.

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Starred review from February 15, 2019
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2018

Having opened the Inspector Shan series with the Edgar Award-winning Skull Mantra, Pattison now closes it with the inspector's tenth outing. Shan Tao Yun is bothered by the execution of a reputedly corrupt Tibetan, suspecting that it was in fact a contrived murder, then further confused when a monk accused of killing soldiers with Buddhist magic is suddenly made special deputy to the county governor. It looks as if a big power struggle has been launched; will he survive?

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