Bong Miquiabas meets Beijing-based author Catherine Sampson, author of new crime thriller The Slaughter Pavilion.

Author Catherine Sampson ponders the question like she’s uncovered a plot twist. “How has China changed me?” she repeats. After spending nearly 20 years in country, Sampson still can’t put her finger on the answer. Finally, a look of concentration gives way to a warm smile, and she concludes, “I’m not sure exactly how … but I’m sure it has.”

This much is also certain: Sampson writes well-detailed and gripping stories about characters whose private plights mirror the social tensions straining contemporary China. In her latest crime novel, The Slaughter Pavilion, Sampson follows the travails of Song Ren, a down-on-his-luck private eye investigating the disappearance of a child from the countryside near Beijing.

Sampson has lived in the Chinese capital for 13 years, the last seven continuously. Her China-entwined life began when she decided “to do something different” and study Mandarin as part of her BA studies in Modern Chinese at Leeds University, in England. She first touched Chinese soil in 1981 when she attended Shanghai’s Fudan University, as part of a student exchange programme. Sampson arrived in a land just opening up after Deng Xiaoping’s landmark reforms, and the country has captivated her ever since. “I find China a continually fascinating place, where history unfolds every day,” she says.

After the year-long exchange, Sampson returned to Leeds, graduating in 1984. But the experience abroad led her to map out a return to China, and she came back as an English teacher, staying for a year on the island of Gulangyu, just off the coast of Xiamen, in Fujian province. Sampson subsequently returned to England, and then found herself back in China once more, this time as a journalist – first with the BBC, then with The Times of London. During this period, Sampson met James Miles currently the Beijing correspondent for The Economist. Eventually they got married, and now have three children.

Over the last decade, Sampson has gradually made the transition from journalist to full-time crime novelist , but she always calls on her extensive knowledge of China when writing. “I set the stories in Beijing because that’s what I know best. I’ve found it’s much easier to write about China when I’m in China and about England when I’m there.”

The Slaughter Pavilion is the fourth book in her series of crime novels. The first two books – Falling Off Air and Out of Mind, both set in England, – focused on private investigator Robin Ballantyne. The next book, Pool of Unease, still features Ballantyne, but also introduces readers to Song Ren.

“For The Slaughter Pavilion, I thought it would be good to set the story in the Chinese countryside because a lot is going on there,” Sampson says. Song, a former cop, is particularly haunted in this story because he had been sought out by the abducted child’s father before the father’s dramatic climb atop a scaffold, a scene inspired by a real news event Sampson heard about. “The issues in the book are real,” she says. “Child trafficking happens. Certainly the frustrations with police and corruption are widespread.”

The Slaughter Pavilion, inspired by a building in Beijing’s Ritan Park where members of imperial households slaughtered animals to honour their emperor , symbolises the sacrifices everyday people make to local officials. The cast of lively characters includes Song’s loyal assistants at his imperilled agency; a self-absorbed, estranged former wife and their neglected son; and several of Song’s shadowy former colleagues, enemies, and their associates.

Most interestingly, Sampson shines a light on the difficult decisions many impoverished families face in today’s countryside. Two characters, Yanhua and Meimei, are young sisters whose daily walk to school is the setting for the story’s most harrowing passages.  Sampson shows her knack for dramatic tension when describing the girls on the route late one night: “A cloaked figure appeared and moved towards them, a bedraggled dog slinking at his feet. He had a torch in his hand. Yanhua stared. The figure seemed to vanish behind patches of rain, re-emerging where she had not expected, then vanishing again.”

Chapters in The Slaughter Pavilion alternate between describing the humble lives of the sisters, in a village teeming with migrant labourers, and tracking Song’s tortuous investigation of the man who came from the countryside. Slowly, all the characters’ stories merge.

“I’ve got quite a lot filed away in terms of memories,” Sampson says of how she constructs the plot. “My research is not academic as much as it’s just absorbing what’s going on around me. The Chinese internet is awash in debate, especially about crime. The characters represent certain traits of people I’ve met and observed.”

The pace of The Slaughter Pavilion quickens every chapter, and though her multi-character story seems to come together effortlessly, Sampson calls the undertaking “A lot of hard work. But I like setting up the characters and not knowing what happens next,” she says. “It’s like building a crossword.”

When she’s not writing novels, Sampson blogs on occasion for The Guardian, sharing her views on what’s happening in China. “I love the world of blogs. It’s so much easier than the job of being a journalist where you have to report on everything.”

Feedback to her latest work has been uniformly positive, though mostly limited to English-language media. Her novels have not yet been translated into Chinese and at the moment there are no plans to do so. But Sampson says the reaction of one Chinese acquaintance is telling. “[The friend] said she was ashamed by what was portrayed, but she said she knew that what I wrote was true to life.”

Sampson’s career as an author has dovetailed with the world’s growing interest in China. “But that’s not why I write,” she insists. “I want to write good stories, and my audience are people who want to read them.” Specifically, Sampson writes about making moral choices in the fast-changing country. “All my books at some level are about good and evil. In China it’s not just black and white. It’s not always clear what to do. Song Ren is like many people in China – a good person in a very grey world.”

The Slaughter Pavilion is published by Pan Macmillan, www.macmillan.com.hk