[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]

BONE MOUNTAIN by Eliot Pattison St. Martin's Press, September 2002 352 pages $24.95 ISBN: 0312277601

This is the third work of fiction by international lawyer Eliot Pattison. While Pattison is noted for his legal and business non-fiction works, he has only become known to a wider audience through his thrillers. The first two, Edgar Award winning The Skull Mantra and Water Touching Stone introduced readers to an unusual concept : a fictionalised treatment of Buddhism in a cruelly treated and oppressed Tibet. The protagonist of the first two novels, Han Chinese former investigator, Shan Tao Lun, continues his perilous journey and investigations into both the cruelties perpetrated on the country and the individual mysteries brought to his attention, yet the country of Tibet somehow becomes the chief character of the books.

The narrative begins as peacefully as is possible in the tormented land, with the construction of a mandala, those sand paintings, made by Tibetan monks, that have become increasingly famous throughout the world, both for their beauty and their impermanence. Shan is one of the men entrusted with the precious sand but the whole is ruined when blood stains the circle. Drakte, one of Shan's party, has been set upon by a dobdob, or monk policeman, and it seems that he has been murdered by unknown means although the dobdob employed only his staff.

Shan has been assigned a mission, the fulfilment of a prophecy that a Chinese of pure heart will return the eye of a shattered deity to Yapchi Valley. It only later becomes known to Shan that the stone, the eye, while originally stolen from the Tibetans, has in turn been stolen from a Chinese Red Army brigade, the colonel of which, Lin is determined to recover what he sees as his property. To the deeply spiritual Tibetans whose connection to the land is deep, it seems an American-Chinese oil consortium is going to rip the blood of the land from the valley and the deity is the only being that can perhaps avert the sacrilege.

The former investigator, as in previous books, increases his knowledge of both himself and the Tibetan peoples as he endures his quest. He meets the quixotic Winslow, the cowboy American diplomat, who is attempting to recover the body of an American geologist, Melissa Larkin . The geologist has been reported as having died during a period of altitude sickness, falling from a ledge high in the mountains. During his journey Shan also meets many people tied to his quest including Anya, the child through whom an oracle speaks, an illegal monk with his endearing yak and the 'chairman' of one of the new, legal gompas that blend Buddhism with the 'ideals' of Chinese political thinking. He finds himself also in search of a missing, supposed kidnapped, Abbott and the murderer of a Chinese official. Shan has been unofficially released from a gulag camp. If he is seized by Chinese officials he would be re-imprisoned. Therefore the investigator must constantly avoid capture yet probe as best he may while protecting his aged friends.

I have often found that writers with a deep appreciation of language may be found amongst the legal profession. Certainly Pattison is an excellent craftsman of greatly affecting prose. His work conveys an air of authenticity to his story which can only horrify at the same time as it fascinates the reader with the listing of atrocities committed by the repressive Chinese regime on the deeply spiritual people of Tibet. Pattison depicts his characters in a very convincing manner and Shan's development is completely believable. I look forward to the next episode in this series with a great deal of pleasant anticipation.

Reviewed by Denise Wels, February 2003

[ Top ]

QUICK SEARCH:

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)

[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]