Review | The Colour of Thunder: Suzanne Harrison’s debut novel is a gripping Hong Kong thriller
- The plot of this sinuous mystery juggles murder, kidnapping, child trafficking, corrupt policing, assault, arson and political oppression
- It is into the ‘carnival-like craziness’ of her adopted home that Harrison, a former South China Morning Post reporter, pitches us most gleefully
The Colour of Thunder
by Suzanne Harrison
Legend Press
A metaphorical and a meteorological storm team up to threaten Hong Kong in Suzanne Harrison’s debut novel – but it’s a seething pot of bitter grievance and cold-case crime that really threatens to boil over in this sinuous thriller.
Unsettled scores, ceaseless suspicion and family shame cast long shadows in The Colour of Thunder, whose various victims, while recognising that past and present are two radically different countries, trust in one potential, unifying system of poetic justice. And beyond all the menace and mystery, the story has enough namechecked landmarks and locations to feature on any Hong Kong Tourism Board “recommended reading” list.
Most of the main players, having been drawn here as (it would seem) expatriates eyeing big money or wanderers returning home, have a direct or tangential interest in the dealings of Johnny Humphries, darling of the weekend gin-palace junk set. Johnny is a handsome British-Chinese financier in his late 40s, with an obnoxious, violent gweilo sidekick-fixer and a chronic commitment problem when it comes to the conveyor belt of doting women in his life.
While a cashed-up banker-type residing on The Peak might sound like an eyeball-rolling cliché of a character, especially in a place “bursting with the entitled and the arrogant”, he is not without depth – much of it wisely hidden. Meanwhile, the implacable but only tenuously connected girl-power group that, for numerous reasons, wants to bring him down ends up acting like the four horsewomen of the personal apocalypse. Most of them have so much depth they can sometimes feel lost in the convolutions of their overly detailed backstories.
But the plot is hardly short of colour, thunderous or otherwise, juggling as it does the cheery topics of murder, kidnapping, child trafficking, corrupt policing, assault, arson and political oppression. Levering the circumstances behind that lot into the narrative means its pace sometimes slackens, but it picks up as clues (for the reader) start to drop into place and a plan (for the vengeance seekers) begins to emerge.
When not on these shores the story shifts to London, Sydney, Perth, Tianjin and Beijing, but it is into the “carnival-like craziness” of her adopted home of Hong Kong that Harrison, a former South China Morning Post reporter, pitches us most gleefully. If you thought Hong Kong was really just a village of 7.5 million people, in truth, it’s probably even smaller, such are its many, often undesired, “small-world” meetings and coincidences, acknowledged here. And although, as Harrison intimates, dark clouds might be parking themselves overhead, this is a town that’s still partying like it’s 1997.
If you read the book while in Hong Kong, you will find yourself unavoidably stepping into the real world of Harrison’s tormented, fictional characters. Those of us estranged from but nostalgic about the place can almost smell it.
