Bone Mountain
A Novel
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Deep in the heart of Tibet, Shan Tao Yun, an exiled Chinese national and a former Beijing government Inspector, is caught between the brutal Chinese army and a Western oil company. Shan has agreed to lead an expedition to return the eye of an idol, stolen almost a century ago and recently, clandestinely recovered, to a distant valley, an act that will fulfill an important Tibetan prophecy. But the pilgrimage turns into a desperate flight when the monk who is to lead them is murdered. Shan also discovers that the stone was stolen back from a brigade of the Chinese army that is now in hot pursuit.
Still possessing an investigator's love of truth, Shan faces a perplexing tangle of mysteries. Why are the Chinese so desperate to retrieve the stone eye, why has an American geologist abandoned the oil company's drilling project and fled into the mountains, and why are rumors sweeping the countryside that an ancient lama is returning to liberate this country? As he digs into these questions, Shan realizes that there is more at stake than mere justice: the spiritual survival of his people is in danger as well.
Complex and compelling, Bone Mountain is a spectacular achievement from a major voice in crime fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this third suspenseful mystery-thriller from Edgar winner Pattison (The Skull Mantra; Water Touching Stone), discredited former Beijing police investigator Shan Tao Yun, unofficially released from a central Tibetan gulag, is now living with a group of outlaw Buddhist monks, some of whom helped him through his most unbearable prison experiences. In gratitude he and his friend, the renegade monk Lokesh, agree to escort a stolen religious artifact to the remote Yapchi Valley, the site, coincidentally, of international oil explorations, from which an American engineer has disappeared. Chinese plans to clear the valley and relocate its farmers and sheepherders to cities will profit the mining project and aid the Chinese "in another effort to pry Tibet's collective fingers from its rosary." Just as the holy artifact is a mystical symbol of Tibetan culture and Buddhism, so the multilayered story is imbued with Tibetan belief, civilization and politics. Readers with little knowledge of Tibet's religion and history may have difficulty following the plot with its large cast of varied, well-drawn Tibetans, Chinese and Americans, countless treks through rugged, stunning landscapes and the numerous side plots including several murders some of which are red herrings. Pattison's empathy for the cause of Tibetan independence is admirable, but it often overwhelms his story. The book, which is far too long and discursive, becomes a polemic that dilutes Shan's search for the truth. National author tour.
