Disgraced former Beijing Inspector Shan Tao Yun has been living in the remote mountains of Tibet since his unofficial release from a work camp. Without status official identity or the freedom to return to his former home in Beijing hes lived with the forbidden lamas for the past year. But now theres apparently been a murder in a ruined monastery and the very officials who exiled Shan are after his help. In a baffling case involving the FBI Chinese Ministers and British relief workers Shan travels from Tibet to Beijing to the U.S. to find the links between murder missing art his former gulag and his own long-unseen son.