This Cold Night is a crime novel with a detective (Rosanna Quillan) trying to solve mysteries. Missing girl. Murder. Fraud. The usual.
There is also an issue in it that might not have concerned me so much if we were not living through these present times. I am not so naïve as to think we ever really did live in civilised times, but there were moments when we pretended that there were decent ways of getting on with each other, that tolerance, charitable goodwill and concern were virtues to be admired and even practised. No pretence anymore. Accepted rules have given way to might is right. Rational argument has given way to aggression and violence. Truth has given way to bare-faced lies. Minimal courtesy has given way to insults, threats and obscenities. Faith has become a vehicle for hatred. This cold night that we are passing through is enough to turn us all insane. God help anyone who is just plain nice.
Just to be nice about it, my English teacher, half a century ago, complained bitterly about our casual use of the word Nice meaning pleasant, agreeable, likeable, when it really meant precise, neat or finicky. He was playing a losing hand. More than 150 years before he lectured us on the subject, Jane Austen had Henry Tilney doing exactly the same In Northanger Abbey. I think the popular vote won. People can be untidy and nice.
This Cold Night features someone who is nice. So nice that everyone likes her (if they notice her at all). She isn’t cynical: she believes what people say. She cares. She is generous. She wants to help. She wants to be a part and play a part for the benefit of others. In this world, such a nice person just has to be doomed.
Very few people are really saints, but then they mostly aren’t 100% demons either. There’s a bit of both in all of us, including my characters, and that will inevitably lead to all manner of complications and confusions. Which is just as well.
Thorne Moore 