The Mean Streets

*Oracle Lake

by Paul Adam

Thomas Dunne/St.Martin’s                              

ISBN 0-312-37025-3                                     

July 2007                                                        

(Published previously in Great Britain as Flash Point)

Paul Adam’s latest takes the reader to what is perhaps the world’s most forbidding region, Tibet, high atop the Himalaya Mountains. Tibet is a country shrouded in mystery and arcane lore but, alas, it’s also a country that is being systematically raped of its natural resources (timber and ore) by the Chinese government. Known now officially as Xixang, the Tibetan people themselves suffer economic, political and religious oppression at the hands of their overlords. Sadly both the land and the people of Tibet have all but been forgotten by the West. Their culture and their way of life have been sacrificed on the bloody altar of political expediency. Although not devoid of a few glitches along the way, Oracle Lake is solid thriller. Ifnothing else, Adams is to be given high marks for refocusing attention on this much neglected part of the world.

Maggie Walsh is a tough-as-nails British photojournalist who gets a tip that the Dalai Lama – spiritual leader of Tibet’s largely Buddhist population – has died. She makes her way to India (home to the Tibetan government in exile) and, eventually, to Tibet itself. Once there she becomes caught up in the clandestine search for the deceased spiritual leader’s next incarnation. Pursued by Chinese security forces who will stop at nothing to prevent the Tibetan masses from rallying around a new religious figurehead, she and the monks she is accompanying survive one hair-raising escape after another. This is a rousing and entertaining story which makes wonderful use of its exotic settings. The search party’s harrowing journey from deep in Tibet, over the mountains, to the border with India (and freedom) is nothing short of pulse-pounding. Adams writes action sequences with the best of them. The characters are, of the most part, richly drawn and the spiritual elements in the story, as well as the material relating explicitly to Buddhist ritual practice, are handled with great care. Consider, for example, the following description of a traditional Tibetan “sky-burial”:

“The three monks watched from a distance. Tsering and Lobsang had witnessed sky burials before but for Jigme, most of his adult life spent in exile, this was the first time. He knew the rationale behind what was, to Western eyes, a rather gruesome funeral practice: that in a country where the ground was too rocky or frozen for ordinary burial, and where there was little wood for cremation, a sky burial was the only practical solution, as well as being a final act of charity – providing food for other living creatures … He looked away, watching thevultures on the clifftop … They were stretching their wings, adjusting their talons on their precipitous perches, their hard, beady eyes fixed on the feast being prepared for them below. When the ragyapa [fleshcutters] finished their bloody work … the vultures … descended en masse, swooping down and settling over the flat rock like a voluminous black cloak.”

Less skillful is the melodramatic and predictable subplot concerning (what else?) the growing attraction that develops between Maggie and one of the monks with whom she is journeying. Even more disturbing, however, is the author’s wholly one-dimensional portrayal of the Chinese political functionaries who control Tibet. The Chinese characters in this novel are, to a person, portrayed in stereotypical terms – inscrutable, vicious and, worst of all, bureaucratic. There’s little doubt that, in the real world, the communist Chinese government rules Tibet with an iron fist. Surely, however, a writer as intelligent and accomplished as Adams understands that there is a huge gap between individuals of whatever political stripe and political systems. A little more balance, and hence a little more realism, is definitely called for here.

In the end, however, Oracle Lake is still a wholly compelling and interesting novel set in a locale that is rich in history, drama and pathos. This would be a splendid book to pack for vacation or for that long plane ride. A “political” thriller with real soul, it’s a page-turner with the kind of depth that is not often found in more pedestrian novels of this sort.

* Full Review published first in Mystery News (August/September 2007)

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