[Inspector Shan 02] • Water Touching Stone

Summoned by the news that a venerated teacher has been murdered and a lama is missing, an unlikely group of outcasts dashes across the remote northern reaches of the Tibetan plateau. Two old Tibetans are rushing to restore the spiritual balance caused by the violent death. A sullen resistance fighter is racing to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, the exiled former investigator from Beijing just released from four years in the gulag, has set out to find justice, an elusive goal among the embittered, forgotten people of western China.Guided by a spirited young Kazakh woman, Shan begins to peel away the many layers of secrets that hide the true motives of the killer, and discovers an American -- an apparent infiltrator of the dissident movement -- dead in the local prison, a haunting ruin of the Silk Road. Ultimately Shan's answers can be found only by revealing still greater tragedies. Justice, in the rough form he has come to expect, is available only if he is able to pierce the hatred and distrust that has been bred by Beijing's rule.

A taut thriller told by an emerging master, Water Touching Stone is one of the year's most eagerly-awaited novels.