Catherine Sampson’s latest crime novel sketches a Beijing full of shadowy alleys, chilly nights and of course mysterious murders.

It is a dark and stormy night. The rain lashes vertically while lightning intermittently illuminates the eerie sky; bone shaking claps of thunder reverberate through the gray apartment blocks. Huddled over a mulberry candle, the electricity box still empty from the day before, my eyes hungrily devour the pages of “The Pool of Unease.” Suddenly the sky cracks open, violently shaking the window panes, and just as hauntingly, author Catherine Sampson murders another Chinese girl.

“Crime is a great framework for a strong plotline … I felt that Beijing, with its rapid social change and dislocation, with the mix of super-rich and very poor, was a great setting for a crime novel,” says Sampson, speaking from her parents’ house while on vacation in England. “The Pool of Unease” is Sampson's third murder mystery, and the first set in China. Originally from Wiltshire, the novelist’s interest in China materialized early in her studies. At university she applied to study Chinese “because few people did so back then.” After graduating from Leeds, where professors were none too enthusiastic that Sampson would be able to harvest a career in a country still cloaked in secrecy, she packed up and continued her studies at Harvard University for a year, once again focusing on China. Sampson first came to the Middle Kingdom at 19, has lived in Beijing for a total of 12 years and also spent another five years in Shanghai, Xiamen (as a teacher) and Hong Kong.

“The thing I love about being in Beijing is the sense that you are watching history unfurl in front of your eyes,” says Sampson. “I have witnessed some of the darkest incidents in recent Chinese history as well as the economic liberalization of the last few years. It’s been a rollercoaster ride.”

In Beijing, Sampson worked as the China correspondent for The Times. And as many novelists will tell you, writing from what you know is only natural, so it is no surprise that the heroine of Sampson’s three crime novels is also a journalist and a mother. “I like her because she’s gutsy, and she’s serious about her work and about her family,” says Sampson of her character, Robin Ballantyne.

In the first two novels, both set in England, Robin, as a journalist for the fictional TV news station Corporation, ensnarls herself in suspicious murders and missing persons’ reports, seeking an answer even if it means putting herself in harm’s way. For Sampson's third thriller, she moved the setting away from England; it was difficult writing her second book she says, as it was set in England and Sampson was already living in Beijing at the time. Thus, in the third novel, Robin is sent by the Corporation to investigate a British man’s murder in Beijing. In “The Pool of Unease” we find a China caught somewhere between the simple past and the fast-paced present, reflecting Sampson’s long association with the city.

“I remember [Beijing] as a sleepy town of alleyways and homing pigeons whistling through the sky—and the sky was often blue. Of course I feel nostalgic for the past, but I love the raw energy I feel buzzing through the city now,” says Sampson.

The wick of the candle is drowning in muddy red wax, casting smaller and smaller shadows on my wall. The torrential rain has subsided to a mist, but still feeds the grainy rivers that run through the black streets. I grab an umbrella and silently move through the night, clutching “The Pool of Unease” in my free hand. Carefully, I make my way to the scene of some of the more gruesome murders in Sampson’s novel: Hou Hai.

As I wind through damp, dimly lit alleyways I think of Detective Song, Sampson’s Chinese counterpart to Robin. Song, a private detective, is unwittingly thrust into the middle of a string of killings when he tries to save an immigrant boy from a fire. The young boy’s sister is later found in the icy grip of Hou Hai, naked and decaying, and Song is set on a path against his better judgment to help the child. “Detective Song was created because I knew I wanted a hero who operated both within and outside of Chinese society,” says Sampson. “But while I was writing I came to love Detective Song. He is a decent man struggling against the system—there are so many men and women like him.”

Robin, inadvertently, is one of the few who actually see the boy’s sister dead and through a dense web of lies and killings, Robin sets out to uncover whether or not the British man’s murder, also at Hou Hai, is linked to the rash of killings of young Chinese women. Inevitably, Song and Robin meet and as they seek the truth behind who murdered the Brit and the women, they run up against an unhappy police chief and an extremely wealthy, and seemingly villainous, Chinese businessman.

As I stand on the banks of Hou Hai, the thought of a British expat’s headless body being found in a shallow grave not far from where I stand sends a chill up my spine. “Until recently foreigners have been very much insulated from the more raw aspects of China,” comments Sampson. “Just as foreigners enjoy many aspects of closer involvement in Chinese society—they can have true friendships, travel and do business—so that will inevitably carry a downside. Being closer means being closer to everything.”

The trees rustle behind me. I feel a chill of air rush by and drop the book I am holding. The cover, a sketch of the lake with a violent hole seeping blood across the cracks, stares up at me. I grab it, thinking about the skinned cats and tortured souls that lie within, and hurry through the shadowy alleys, glad that unlike Sampson's fictional Beijing, full of dark, icy nights, twisted men and murders, Beijing remains safe, at least for now.

A Trio of Murder

Books by Catherine Sampson

Falling Off Air

From the safety of her living room, her infant twins in bed and a storm raging outside, television reporter Robin Ballantyne is horrified to witness the death of her celebrity neighbor. At first an innocent bystander, Robin is then pushed into the frame for suspected murder, while desperately clutching at her precarious family life and teetering reputation. When tragedy moves even closer to home, Robin finds herself embroiled in a terrifying race against the clock to save her name, and her life.

Out of Mind

Robin Ballantyne is directing a missing persons series for the Corporation; a haunting project that will attempt the reconstruction of vanished lives. But when Robin enquires about missing colleague Melanie Jacobs, she is advised by a shadowy superior to leave the case alone. But Robin’s questions are leading her into an unstable, conspiratorial world. Can she stay in control and out of danger?

The Pool of Unease

Robin Ballantyne is investigating the murder of a British man in Beijing. His headless body was found in woods by an icy, fetid lake—is his death linked to a recent series of brutal attacks on women? In a city thick with paranoia and corruption, Robin struggles to separate rumor from reality.

www.catherinesampson.com