Pattison is an Edgar-award winning author who created the character Shan Yao Tun, an ethnic Chinese exiled in Tibet. Shan is one of the more unusual sleuths in today's mystery genre, and I am really intrigued by him.
Shan is an undocumented worker in Tibet who could basically be imprisoned at any time. He is an expert mountaineer, who makes his living helping expeditions get to the top of Everest and the other peaks in the Tibetan Himalayas. His current focus is finding a way to get his son, Ko, released from the Chinese "yeti factory," a hospital prison where the mostly political prisoners are subjected to medical and biological experiments. Ko must be rescued before his brain or other vital organs are extracted or tested to the point of turning him into a vegetable.
In "The Lord of Death" Shan solves several puzzles of how to get the monks in a threatened monastery over the mountains and into Nepal or India safely. He must enlist the help of an American climbing leader, some of his Tibetan climbing team members, and even some Chinese officials Shan helps tit-for-tat in order to get the life-saving rescue done for his son.
Along the way Shan also solves the mysteries of who killed a Chinese Party Communist Party official, an American climber, and a Nepalese climber.
Pattison has an excellent grasp on Buddhist traditions, Chinese philosophy and how these can be woven into a very fresh and interesting plot for a mystery. The reader is carried in to the story and gets involved with characters who live in a very different world, think differently, and have very different experiences, and yet one ends up thinking about many of the people in this book like friends, enemies and acquaintances in one's own life. That is quite an achievement to make such a different world come alive for those of us with a western perspective.
I am looking forward to reading more of the Shan mystery series.
Liz Nichols
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