Exclusive interview with author Eliot Pattison and a review of his latest Inspector Shan novel
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“Many of my readers and reviewers who encounter the series for the first time ask me why I would write novels set in such a remote and unknown place as Tibet,” says Mandarin Gate author Eliot Pattison. “There is a great joy and harmony among Tibetans that has very little to do with what we in the West tend to link to happiness. They are technologically poor but spiritually rich, intellectually sophisticated but materially impoverished. Year after year they stand up to unthinkable acts of repression. The adversity they face, and the heroes and saints it generates, merit much more attention on the world stage.”
Mandarin Gate is the latest in Pattison’s Inspector Shan series, which has sold over a million copies in twenty languages. Pattison portrays the oppression and dismantling of Tibet with some delicacy, but it’s still a shock to the reader that it could still be happening. The character of Shan is compelling and a sound investigator. There are seven previous books so it may be a little confusing to start with this volume. The basic plot is compelling, but there is much more description than needed. For a book set in Tibet, there’s less spirituality than one might expect.
Former inspector Shan Tao Yun worked against a powerful figure high in the Chinese government. Yun has lost his title and his family is locked up in a work camp. Released unofficially without paperwork, Shan lives with a group of Buddhist monks in the remote mountains. He can’t return to Beijing. Doing his job of inspecting irrigation and sewer ditches in a remote Tibetan township, he comes across bloody crime scene at an old Buddhist temple undergoing restoration. There is a Tibetan nun and two men – one an outsider. The murders don’t make sense. Is this a cover-up and why? Can Shan solve the crime, protect an American woman who saw the killer, and avoid being sent back to a camp?
Pattison says his decision to write about Tibet came after many years of global travel. “I gave up counting the miles after I reached a million over 15 years ago, during which I gained many insights into geopolitics and clashes between cultures. During those years I had written several nonfiction books and wanted to shift gears by trying my hand at a mystery. At the same time I had developed a deep conviction that Tibet has a vitally important message that is too often overlooked in the West.”
“I have been a student of Asian history and Asian religions since I was in my teens,” says Pattison. “My endless search for resources led me to scour back alley bookstores in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok and other Asian cities, where I gathered up little known, long out-of-print chronicles of Asia in earlier times. I have amassed a sizable library and still take delight in dusting off these rare volumes and rediscovering life as it once was in the lands now subsumed by modern China.”
“The most remarkable, and satisfying, aspect of writing this series has been learning how the books have sparked new interest in Tibet for many of my readers around the world,” says Pattison. “More than a few have commented that they never understood the realities of modern Tibet until they read Mandarin Gate and my other Shan novels.”
Mandarin Gate Inspector Shan (Book 7) author Eliot Pattison. Paperback, 320 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books (December 24, 2013), Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-1250036506 Paperback $12.60. Kindle version File Size: 858 KB, Print Length: 320 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books (November 27, 2012), Sold by: Macmillan, Language: English, ASIN: B008E7SF94
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