Mandarin Gate (Inspector Shan Tao Yun Novels)
Pattison’s storytelling prowess and commitment to exposing the truth about China’s “dismantlement of Tibet” are as potent as ever in his seventh Tibetan mystery. His embattled hero Shan Tao Yun’s Chinese ethnicity and former life as a Beijing investigator disguise his profound allegiance to Tibet, especially the few surviving monks, nuns, and lamas struggling to preserve the country’s mountain-anchored spiritual traditions, though his tattoo marking him as a gulag survivor offers a clue. Always careful to steer clear of the Chinese authorities, Shan nonetheless snaps into full detection mode when a trio of gruesome murders takes place at a ruined convent. His risky investigation is complicated by the uncanny ability of a determined woman, a Chinese official, to appear at the direst of moments. The master of suspense stoked by humanitarian outrage, Pattison ratchets up his dramatic and soulful series with an embroiling plot involving a Chinese gang, a monk’s shocking suicide, charming exiled professors, and a dissident computer hacker to reveal the Chinese government’s newest and most diabolical mode of cultural annihilation in magnificent, much-violated Tibet. --Donna Seaman