Eliot Pattison at Kingdom Books, Sunday August 1, 7 p.m.

Eliot Pattison's Edgar Award is for the first book of his Inspector Shan series, The Skull Mantra. I don't expect to reach Tibet in person -- so I treasure the chance to sample the paradoxes of this Chinese-occupied land that was once autonomous, and that still represents the original spiritual and physical home of the Dalai Lama and other great Buddhist leaders.

The Shan series continues (and I wouldn't miss a one of these!). Meanwhile, Pattison created a second series, the Bone Rattler sequence, set in colonial America and pinned to the haunting and loss-riddled friendship of an exiled Scotsman and an Iroquois shaman. With this year's release of Eye of the Raven, we follow Conawago and Duncan McCallum as their differences become acutely apparent, even though both are members of tribes/clans threatened with extinction under the hand of the land-hungry English. Murder, suicide, political maneuvering? McCallum's efforts to understand the people and landscape that he's desperately adopting enrich this crime novel in unexpected directions.

Pattison's visit to Kingdom Books on August 1 will include him reading from Eye of the Raven and also discussion of his other work. Come if you can -- and for those who can't be there, I'll post some notes afterward. Signed copies are of course available.