Both The Skull Mantra and Water Touching Stone were selected by for its annual list of ten best new mysteries. The series has been translated into over twenty languages around the world. Now time is running out for Shan to find the real killer.in an astonishing, emotionally charged story that will change the way you think about Tibet-and freedom-forever.Įdgar Award winning Eliot Pattison has been described as a 'writer of faraway mysteries,' a label which is particularly apt for someone whose travel and interests span a million miles of global trekking, visiting every continent but Antarctica.Īn international lawyer by training, Pattison first combined his deep concerns for the people of Tibet with his interest in fiction writing in The Skull Mantra, which launched the popular Inspector Shan series. Then, a Buddhist priest is arrested, a man Shan knows is innocent. Granted a temporary release, Shan is soon pulled into the Tibetan people's desperate fight for its sacred mountains and the Chinese regime's blood-soaked policies.

Methodical, clever Shan is the best man for the job, but he too is a prisoner, deported to Tibet for offending Beijing. So the case is handed to veteran police inspector Shan Tao Yun.

Found by a Tibetan prison work gang on a windy cliff, the grisly remains clearly belong to someone too important for Chinese authorities to bury and forget. The corpse is missing its head and is dressed in American clothes. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, author Elliot Pattison masterfully scales the heights of the genre, taking readers to the top of the world while he chills us to the bone in. Critical acclaim ranks The Skull Mantra with Gorky Park and Smilla’s Sense of Snow as a novel as much about a people and a place-the Tibetans of the high Himalayas-as it is a gripping thriller.

The skull mantra