The view from Point Sur Lighthouse is breathtaking. It’s perched up on a huge rock and surrounded by water on three sides. Shimmering views of the Pacific. Sea lions echoing up from the rocks below.

The opening of Pattison's intricate fourth book (after 2002's Bone Mountain) finds Shan, his disgraced Chinese police inspector, still living among the outcast monks in the mountains of Tibet, where ...