The Fifth Rule of Ten

by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay

When a fundraising event for Los Angeles’ Buddhist temple goes awry, Ten Norbu finds himself mired in a web of crime that only a former monk turned private investigator can solve
 
Be mindful, both making and keeping commitments, that they be springboards to liberation, instead of suffering. —The Fifth Rule of Ten
 
Ten and his fiancée, Julie, excitedly await the arrival of Ten’s best friends, Lama Yeshe and Lama Lobsang. Ten’s boyhood friends are now the Head Abbots at Tenzing’s former monastic home in India. Ten has helped Yeshe and Lobsang organize a fundraising event sponsored by the Los Angeles Buddhist temple where Tenzing first taught years ago, before shedding his robes to attend the police academy. The big feature of the event will be the unveiling of a sacred sand-painted mandala that the monks will construct in the center of the temple.
 
At the premiere, however, a group of hooligans commit an outrageous act that catapults the story into action. To complicate matters, one of the novice lamas—a brilliant protégé of Lobsang’s—goes missing. Soon a series of strange crimes beset the city, some physical, some cyber. Each crime is unique, but all are mysteriously interconnected.
 
Ten’s attempts to solve those crimes pull him into a dark mirror-world of his sacred Tibetan Buddhist tradition; soon he is engaged in a life-and-death battle with a powerful shadow presence. He joins forces with Yeshe, Lobsang, his ex-partner, Bill, and his hack-tivist buddy, Mike, to track down the Patient Zero of this epidemic of criminal chaos. Finally, he must face the truth: the source of the evil, and the solution, are a lot closer to home than he first thought.

• ISBN10: 1401948677
• ISBN13: 9781401948672
• Publish Date: 9 August 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Hay House
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 384
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781401948672

Reviews

[Beth C.]

LA's favorite non-traditional private investigator is back - but he's not doing so well. Still recovering from the events of the last book, Ten is having nightmares, questioning his relationship with his fiance, and expecting guests - friends from the monastery he grew up in. When he opens his mailbox to see a copy of a driver's license for a kid from England, starts having panic attacks, and hears about a strange body outline in the canyon, well...events are set in motion that Ten could never have imagined.

I have been a follower of the Tenzing Norbu series since the first book. They have long intrigued me, with their mix of mystery and mantras (alliteration, anyone?). I like that Ten is constantly evolving - it's never a case of the main character making the same mistakes over and over again in every book. And I *love* his relationships. They both ground Ten and lift him up, much like what happens in the real world.

Having said all of that - there wasn't as much actual "mystery" in this book. Fewer twists and turns, and more situations that seemed inevitable. Maybe because so much of it revolved around Ten and his past - even more than in past books. Some of it seemed, well...a bit convenient. How some things just seemed to fall into place in a way that seemed too easy. However, it didn't detract terribly from the story itself. I read it all and I enjoyed it, and I would happily read a sixth book in the series. I can just hope that the next one doesn't strain credulity to the degree that this one did.