Eight Skilled Gentlemen.
The third and last of Barry Hughart's novels about Master Li, a scholar with a slight flaw in his character, and Number Ten Ox, his strong and literal-minded companion, set in an ancient China that never was. A murdered mandarin, a cage of dead men and a set of very old gods drive a plot that is part detective story and part myth. Hughart stopped writing after this, which readers of Bridge of Birds have never forgiven.