Inspector Shan Tao Yun

8 primary works • 10 total works

The Skull Mantra

by Eliot Pattison

Published 27 September 1999

A Chinese official is murdered in a slave camp in Tibet. One of the prisoners, a disgraced Chinese prosecutor, is ordered to write a report accusing a Buddhist monk. He discovers the real culprits are Chinese officials and American miners, but the truth may hurt the camp more than a lie.

Water Touching Stone

by Eliot Pattison

Published 1 January 2001

The news that a venerated teacher has been murdered and a lama is missing sends an unlikely band of outcasts into the remote northern reaches of the Tibetan plateau. Two old Tibetans travel to restore the spiritual balance disturbed by violent death. A sullen resistance fighter races to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, former Beijing investigator and newly released from four years of prison camp, sets out to find justice. In the dangerous borderlands of western China, however, justice is elusive. Vengeful officials, soldiers, smugglers, secret Buddhists and the remnants of the proud Muslim clans all stand in the way of Shan's pursuit of a serial killer whose terrible motives lie buried in the Tibetan struggle.

Bone Mountain

by Eliot Pattison

Published 19 September 2002

When disgraced former inspector, Shan Tao Yun joins a group of reverent Tibetans returning a sacred artefact to its home, it seems he has at last found the peace he has struggled for since leaving prison. What starts as a spiritual pilgrimage, however, quickly turns into a desperate flight through the Tibetan wilderness as the outlawed monk who guides them is murdered and Sham discovers that the artefact has recently been stolen from the Chinese army. But why is the army so desperate to find the artefact entrusted to Shan? Why is an aged medicine lama being stalked by government agents? Why has an American woman, a geologist for an oil company, abandoned the project and fled into the mountains? Shan discovers not answers, but only new mysteries as he is drawn to such unexpected places as the raucous headquarters base of the Western oil venture and a monastery that seems more attuned to the teachings of the party than those of Buddha. And the further he travels into the mountains, the more Shan realises that what is at stake is not only justice but the spiritual survival of those who have joined his strange quest. At the heart of Pattison's powerful tale is a story of a brave, oppressed people who have learned to endure by drawing strength from their land and their rich spiritual traditions.

Beautiful Ghosts

by Eliot Pattison

Published 5 April 2004

In an earlier time, Shan Tao Yun was an Inspector stationed in Beijing. But he lost his position, his family and his freedom when he ran afoul of a powerful figure high in the Chinese government. Released unofficially from the work camp to which he'd been sentenced, Shan has been living in remote mountains of Tibet with a group of outlawed Buddhist monks. Without status, official identity, or the freedom to return to his former home in Beijing, Shan finds himself in the midst of a baffling series of events. During a ceremony meant to rededicate an ancient and long destroyed monastery, Shan stumbles across evidence of a recent murder in the ruins. Now Shan is being torn between some officials who want his help to search the ruins while others want him to disappear back into the mountains - with one group holding out the tantalizing prospect of once again seeing the son from whom Shan has been separated for many years.

In a baffling situation where nothing is what it appears to be, where the FBI, high ranking Beijing officials, the long hidden monks, and the almost forgotten history of the region all pull him in different directions, Shan finds his devotion to the truth sorely tested. Traveling from Tibet to Beijing to the U.S., he must find the links between murder on two continents, a high profile art theft, and an enigmatic, long-missing figure from history ...in Eliot Pattison's Beautiful Ghosts.

Prayer of the Dragon: An Inspector Shan Investigation set in Tibet

by Eliot Pattison

Published 1 December 2007

Summoned to a remote Tibetan village from the hidden lamasery where he lives, Shan Tao Yun, formerly an investigator in Beijing, must save a comatose man from execution for two murders in which the victims’ arms have been removed. Upon arrival, he discovers that the suspect is not Tibetan but Navajo. The man has come with his niece, seeking the ancestral ties between their people and the ancient Bon. The recent murders are only part of a chain of deaths. Together with his friends, the monks Gendun and Lokesh, Shan sets out to solve the riddle of Dragon Mountain, the place “where the world begins.”

The Lord of Death: An Inspector Shan Investigation set in Tibet

by Eliot Pattison

Published 1 January 2009

The Chinese minister of tourism has been assassinated on the slope of Everest. Shan, a former investigator from Beijing, must solve the mystery of the assassination to save the accused man, the only person who can help his imprisoned son.

Soul of the Fire

by Eliot Pattison

Published 25 November 2014

When Shan Tao Yun and his old friend Lokesh are abruptly dragged away by Public Security, he is convinced that their secret, often illegal, support of struggling Tibetans has brought their final ruin. But his fear turns to confusion as he discovers he has been chosen to fill a vacancy on a special international commission investigating Tibetan suicides. Soon he finds that his predecessor was murdered, and when a monk sets himself on fire in front of the commissioners he realizes that the Commission is being used as a tool to whitewash Tibet's self-immolation protests as acts of crime and terrorism. Shan faces an impossible dilemma when the Public Security officer who runs the Commission, Major Ren, orders the imprisoned Lokesh beaten to coerce Shan into following Beijing's script for the Commission. He has no choice but to become part of the hated machine that is devouring Tibet, but when he discovers that the most recent immolation was actually another murder, he realizes the Commission itself is riddled with crime and intrigue. Everywhere he turns, Shan finds new secrets that seem lead to the last agonizing chapter of his life.
Shan must make a final desperate effort to uncover the Commission's terrible secrets whose painful truth could change Shan's life - and possibly that of many Tibetans - forever.

Skeleton God

by Eliot Pattison

Published 14 March 2017

Shan Tao Yun, now the reluctant constable of a remote Tibetan town, has learned to expect the impossible at the roof of the world, but nothing has prepared him for his discovery when he investigates a report that a nun has been savagely assaulted by ghosts. In an ancient tomb by the old nun lies a gilded saint buried centuries earlier, flanked by the remains of a Chinese soldier killed fifty years before and an American man murdered only hours earlier. Shan is thrust into a maelstrom of intrigue and contradiction. The Tibetans are terrified, the notorious Public Security Bureau wants nothing to do with the murders, and the army seems determined to just bury the dead again and Shan with them. No one wants to pursue the truth - except Shan, who finds himself in a violent collision between a heartbreaking, clandestine effort to reunite Tibetan refugees separated for decades and a covert corruption investigation that reaches to the top levels of the government in Beijing. The terrible secret Shan uncovers changes his town and his life forever.

Mandarin Gate

by Eliot Pattison

Published 27 November 2012

Shan has just begun to settle into his menial job as an inspector of irrigation and sewer ditches in a remote Tibetan township when he encounters a wrenching crime scene. Strewn across the grounds of an old Buddhist temple undergoing restoration are the bodies of two unidentified men and a Tibetan nun. Shan quickly realizes that the murders pose a riddle the Chinese police might in fact be trying to cover up. When he discovers that a nearby village has been converted into a new internment camp for Tibetan dissidents arrested in Beijing's latest pacification campaign, Shan recognizes the dangerous landscape he has entered. To find justice for the victims and to protect an American woman who witnessed the murders, Shan must navigate through the treacherous worlds of the internment camp, the local criminal gang, and the government's rabid pacification teams, while coping with his growing doubts about his own identity and role in Tibet.

Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

Published 1 April 2019

After Shan Tao Yun is forced to witness the execution of a Tibetan for corruption, he can’t shake the suspicion that he has instead witnessed a murder arranged by conspiring officials. When he learns that a Tibetan monk has been accused by the same officials of using Buddhist magic to murder soldiers, then is abruptly given a badge as special deputy to the county governor, Inspector Shan realises he is being thrust into a ruthless power struggle. Knowing he has made too many enemies in the government, Shan desperately wants to avoid such a battle, but then discovers that among its casualties are a murdered American archaeology student and devout Tibetans who were only trying to protect an ancient shrine.

Soon grasping that the underlying mysteries are rooted in both the Chinese and Tibetan worlds, Shan senses that he alone may be able to find the truth. The path he must take, with the enigmatic, vengeful father of the dead American at his side, is the most treacherous he has ever navigated. More will die before he is able to fully pierce the secrets of this clash between the angry gods of Tibet and Beijing. The costs to Shan and those close to him will be profoundly painful, and his world will be shaken to its core before he crafts his own uniquely Tibetan form of justice.