Finally, a beautifully written, and most important, a COHERENT book of fiction that is guided by a carefully developed plan for moving that plot along, rather than the typical fiction-book author's just dumping in at the end the typical contrived ostensible closing where he or she dismally strives to tie up all the hitherto loose ends for which there was no meaningful prior development. As a fairly recently retired former law school professor, I now anually read (and during most of my pre-retirement years also managed to read quite a lot): 70 or so fiction and non-fiction books annually. So many of them are highly rated (to my amazement) by Amazon readers. (Examples, The Man in Moscow, and Christopher Bollen's The Destroyers. I long ago realized that my reading reviews of movies, plays, art, and books is pretty much a wasted endeavor (for me). My tastes just don't match up with the larger public. So I have no doubt that many people reading this review by me will find it off the mark. So be it. I know it when read it, to paraphrase the late Justice Stewart's aphorism about pornography ("I know it when I see it") and The Red Lotus is the real thing: a REALLY good book.