Pearl's Picks for October

The Skull Mantra

by Eliot Pattison

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I've never stopped suggesting Eliot Pattison's first thriller, The Skull Mantra, to mystery fans. It won a well-deserved Edgar award for Best First Novel when it was published in 1999. In his first novel, Pattison introduced Shan Tao Yun, who has been sent from his job as the Inspector General of the Ministry of Economy in Beijing to a forced labor camp in Tibet, where his fellow prisoners include Tibetan monks and other dissidents. Then a local Chinese official is discovered — headless — near the road construction project Shan has been assigned to. The Chinese colonel who assigns Shan the case bribes him by offering more food and better living conditions, but it's also clear that he expects the murder to be blamed on a specific monk.

As we follow Shan in his attempts to remain true to his conscience, appease the Colonel, survive inhumane conditions, and finally solve a complex mystery, we are introduced to a singular and singularly beautiful country, its people, and its customs. I've seldom read a novel that more effectively captures the soul of its setting, in all of its contradictions, difficulties, and beauty. The real hero of this novel is Tibet during its ongoing struggle for freedom from China.