The Second Rule of Ten
A Tenzing Norbu Mystery
A study in contrasts if ever there was one, Ten is a Buddhist monk turned private investigator who carries a Wilson Combat .38 Supergrade pistol, drives a 1965 Shelby Mustang, and owns a cat named Tank. The First Rule of Ten, written as an admonition to himself, was “Don’t ignore intuitive tickles, lest they reappear as sledgehammers.” The Second Rule of Ten is “Be on the lookout for unconscious beliefs, lest you mistake them for reality.”
Growing up Lama Tenzing (Ten) Norbu in a monastery in Dharamshala India, Ten’s Tibetan father expected that he would become a Buddhist monk, yet after moving to Los Angeles with his American mother he decided to became a police officer instead. After recovering from a wound sustained while intervening in a domestic disturbance, Ten resigned from the LAPD to become a private investigator. With the help of resources like Mike Koenigs, his “information security contractor” (a.k.a. hacker), Ten makes his first serious money by helping aging Hollywood mogul Marv Rudolph find his wayward daughter.
A short time later, Rudolph is murdered, a fake Holocaust tattoo sliced off his wrist. Brought in to consult on the investigation by his former LAPD partner Bill, Ten meets a real Holocaust survivor, philanthropist Julius Rosen, who Rudolph had claimed was helping him produce his “comeback” film Loving Hagar. Rosen and Rudolph were on the outs, but the elderly patron befriends Ten, asking him to look into the fate of the sister he lost in World War II. As the two cases begin to merge, Ten also becomes entangled with a drug cartel and, unsurprisingly, things begin to spiral out of control.
Coauthor Gay Hendricks received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Stanford, worked twenty-one years as a professor of counseling psychology at the University of Colorado, and then founded The Hendricks Institute, with his wife Kathlyn. He is the author of thiety-three nonfiction books, including The Corporate Mystic, Conscious Living, and The Big Leap. The Second Rule of Ten is his second novel.
Coauthor Tinker Lindsay is an accomplished screenwriter, author, script consultant, and conceptual editor. A member of the Writer’s Guild of America, Independent Writers of Southern California, and Women in Film, she has worked in the Hollywood entertainment industry writing and developing feature films for over three decades. Her books include The Last Great Place and My Hollywood Ending.
Combining Lindsay’s screenwriting talents and love of yoga and meditation with Hendricks’s contributions in the body-mind therapy field, the Tenzing Norbu mystery novels were born. This plot is complex and exciting, with underlying themes of relationships, family, and seeing the world as it truly is. There is a fair amount of philosophy, but it is unpretentious and fits well with the story line. As with many authors who switch from nonfiction to fiction there is a tendency toward detail and over-explanation, much of which drives some unevenness in the pacing, yet the book suffers only minimally from this turgidity. Exceptional characterization and dialogue characterize a well-crafted, entertaining mystery, the second of a series that promises many more inttrigues to come.
Reviewed by
Lawrence Kane
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
