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Friday, October 06, 2006

Another Chinese Detective...

Those of you who were interested in Qiu Xiaolong's mysteries might also enjoy Eliot Pattison's novels The Skull Mantra, Bone Mountain, and Water Touching Stone which are excellent. A former Chinese investigator who looked too closely at situations he should have overlooked in Beijing has been exiled to a "gulag" in Tibet where he becomes influenced by the Buddhist Monks who are also imprisoned and condemned to a labor force. For Shan Tao Yun, watching the Buddhist monks leads to a search for a higher morality. These novels are long and involved, the characters are well-developed, the situations tense, sometimes horrifying, and based on the oppression of native peoples in Tibet as China attempts to eliminate cultural differences and religious beliefs.

2 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, my library doesn't have any books by Pattison. Guess I'll be heading over to amazon because these sound excellent. Appreciate the suggestions.

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  2. I found these by accident at my library shortly after the first one was published, and grabbed the successors from the New Book Shelves as soon as the were put out. There is a new one though that I haven't seen at the library and may have to order.

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