The brooding presence of Hong Kong’s impending typhoon season casts a seemingly impenetrable shadow over the lives of three friends whose pasts are
so intertwined that they are unable to escape from the deadly secrets that bind them.
Jonny, Brian and Phil have cultivated a network of deceit, shrouded beneath a cloak of corporate well-being and social insouciance, whose foundations are
seemingly robust enough to withstand the festering suspicions of friendships that have, by necessity, become compartmentalised and emotionally distant.
Suzanne Harrison creates a colourful supporting cast whose paths, circuitous or otherwise, lead inexorably towards Jonny, the suave and street wise face of
the triumvarite whose inability to sustain a relationship smacks of a relentless, and ultimately futile, quest to rediscover an idealised notion of happiness
hidden by his traumatic past.
The characterisations and plot unravel slowly and deliberately reflecting the struggles of the band of disaffected and abused to somehow find the common
thread between an unexplained murder, at an orphanage, and the seemingly blemish free existence of this latter day imperial nabob. Jonny believes himself
to be cocooned by the commercial invulnerability afforded by the region’s status, as a melting pot of east/west commerce, yet is ultimately too distracted
to recognise the imminent threat of China’s growing determination to reclaim a territory they believe is rightfully theirs.
As the author interplays fact and fiction we are reminded of the very real political tensions in the region being overlayed with the fictional desire to
uncover a truth, that has been distilled by Jonny’s alternative facts, and in doing so the strident voices of the human rights movement resonate as this
contemporary tableaux lays bare this maelstrom of conflicting human emotions.
As her relationship with Jonny unravels, Scarlett potentially holds the key to unlocking this network of lies and half-truths but a natural time bomb is about
to be unleashed, over Hong Kong, whose negative energy could perversely provide the stimulus to shatter the façade of fabricated normality and reveal the distressing truth.
The Colour of Thunder by Suzanne Harrison (Published by Legend Press. Price
£8.99). Buy the book at Amazon.
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