ABOUT THE BOOK
Minotaur Books; March 14, 2017
In Eliot Pattison’s Skeleton God, Shan Tao Yun, now the reluctant constable of a remote Tibetan town, has learned to expect the impossible at the roof of the world, but nothing has prepared him for his discovery when he investigates a report that a nun has been savagely assaulted by ghosts. In an ancient tomb by the old nun lies a gilded saint buried centuries earlier, flanked by the remains of a Chinese soldier killed fifty years before and an American man murdered only hours earlier. Shan is thrust into a maelstrom of intrigue and contradiction.
The Tibetans are terrified, the notorious Public Security Bureau wants nothing to do with the murders, and the army seems determined to just bury the dead again and Shan with them. No one wants to pursue the truthÐexcept Shan, who finds himself in a violent collision between a heartbreaking, clandestine effort to reunite refugees from Tibet separated for decades and a covert corruption investigation that reaches to the top levels of the government in Beijing, China. The terrible secret Shan uncovers changes his town and his life forever.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Reduced to their essence my Shan books are a lens onto what may be the greatest crisis of our age: how domestic partisan politics, geopolitical policies built around interest groups and global economic forces have created a moral blindspot in modern government. Governments bicker over petty issues and posturing among themselves while crimes against humanity continue unabated. Tibet is not the only example, it is just the most poignant example.
REVIEWS
“Pattison’s ninth installment provides an important history lesson little understood in the West with authority, nuance, and genuine suspense.” —Kirkus Reviews
Publisher’s Weekly – Starred Review
“Edgar-winner Pattison remains without peer at integrating a fair-play whodunit into a searing portrayal of life under an oppressive and capricious regime, as shown by his ninth Insp. Shan Tao Yun mystery (after 2014’s Soul of the Fire)… Even readers unfamiliar with the physical and cultural devastation China has wrought in Tibet will find themselves engrossed-and moved-by Pattison’s nuanced portrayal.” —Publishers Weekly
