An ice hot thriller to devour with your chow mein…
The Pool Of Unease
Catherine Sampson
Macmillan
review by: Paul W Smith
Beijing. A private detective, Song Ren stakes out a brothel for a client seeking evidence of infidelity, but after rescuing a young boy from a fire, he finds himself a murder suspect. Meanwhile, in Britain, TV journalist Robin Ballantyne is preparing an investigative report on the possible sell-off of a steel work to a Chinese businessman, a task which needs her to fly to Beijing. But as each continue their own investigations, the separate pieces fall together into one blood-stained puzzle that involves wealthy Nelson Li, a ragged child, and a struggling steel plant back in the UK. In Catherine Sampson's carefully controlled hands, the actions of her two characters snowball into the double intrigue of a serial killer and underhand-dealings, which effect two continents and hundreds of lives.
The Pool Of Unease bubbles with pace and clarity, whilst beneath the surface darker currents stir deadlier deeds. Splitting the story between two protagonists – Robin and Song – Catherine Sampson manages to sustain the mystery and intrigue, with Robin's account told in the first person whilst Song's experiences remain in the third person. It becomes a juggling act of narratives, each strand containing its own unravelling mystery, but both destined to cross. Both characters are sketched in with carefully selected detail, and yet they give human depth to the intricacies of the plot. One is the estranged husband of a corrupt police chief's daughter and the other a hard-working mother, each trying to manage a career and some semblance of family life. It grounds them in a reality we all identify with, whilst also taking them both into unknown territories.
A yin and yang of adventure, East meeting West, wealth meeting poverty, where the two strands of story counterbalance each other, simultaneously solving their own internal intrigue whilst crisply joining the story into a full circle. Sampson's own experience as a Beijing-based journalist has ensured that The Pool Of Unease has a tang of gritty authenticity to the crime recipe. She allows the plot to breathe and gather momentum, creating a story that swims with imagination whilst also providing an intriguing window on a city and its people that are being forced to adjust rapidly to change. An ice-hot thriller to devour with your chow mein.