Another Detective in Tibet

Author Eliot Pattison has created a series of detective novels centered around Chinese-born detective Shan Tao Yun. Pattison is an international lawyer and writer living in Pennsylvania. His six Inspector Shan Tao Yun novels include political and social themes regarding Tibet. Students may be interested in reading Eliot Pattison's reasons for choosing Tibet as a setting -- "Why I Write About Tibet"

The following are Pattison's novels in order of publication. For more information about the books, visit the author's website.

 

 

	The Skull Mantra (1999) won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2000. The novel introduces Inspector Shan Tao Yun -- a prisoner in a forced labor camp who is asked to conduct an investigation when a severed head appears in a local, sacred shrine.
	In Water Touching Stone (2002), Inspector Shan must discover who killed a beloved teacher and is endangering orphaned boys in northern Tibet.
	Bone Mountain (2004) chronicles Shan's travels with a salt caravan as he searches for a missing holy artifact.
	The fourth book in the series -- Beautiful Ghosts (2005) -- has Inspector Shan traveling from Tibet to his home town Beijing and even to America to solve a murder.
	In Prayer of the Dragon (2007), two dead bodies and an unconscious man are discovered on a pilgrimage path. This novel, aside from being a mystery, explores the connections between the Tibetan and Navajo cultures.
	The sixth mystery -- The Lord of Death (2009) -- begins as Shan transports a corpse across the slopes of Everest at the request of a local wise woman. During his trek, he hears gunfire and discovers two dead women. Shan must unravel the truth about their deaths.