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My Review of This Cold Night (Cold Case Book 3)  by Thorne Moore #Crime

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Book Description:

2011. Redemption House is a godly retreat for the Brothers and Sister rescued from life on the streets. But when sudden fortune comes to Sister Grace, all peace vanishes—and so does Sister Grace.
2024. Family is an issue for Rosanna Quillan, still nursing the trauma of her mother’s suicide. At sixteen, she left home, to escape the misery, and that’s why she feels compel to pursue the search for a girl who did the same, sixteen years before. What became of Lianne, the girl that everyone liked, but nobody missed?
Rosanna’s quest leads to suspicion, deception and murder. Because not everyone wants Lianne’s mystery solved.

My Review:

This, the third in the Cold Case series, provides yet another riveting complex case for Rosanna Quillan. As usual, Thorne Moore leads us in one direction so that it seems inevitable that a crime will be solved in a certain way – and then, ultimately, take us unawares.

In the past I have said that whichever genre this author writes in, there is one thing any reader can be certain of when holding one of her books in their hands. That they will have a well written “absorbing story, with an innovative plot, meticulous settings that instantly give a sense of place, minor characters they will often either love or hate, and a protagonist with whom they will empathise.”

And This Cold Night is no exception. I enjoyed reading and following Rosanna Quillin’s investigations into Lianne Michaels’s mysterious disappearance, while, at the same time, she struggles with her own past. I’m just glad she has the reliable and loving Gethin by her side. (Giving no spoilers here to prospective readers – but hopefully just enough temptation, because this is a story that anyone who loves crime fiction, threaded throughout with the everyday life of the protagonist, won’t want to miss!)

I’m not normally a reader of crime fiction per se, but this series isn’t only the solving of crime – well I don’t think so, anyway. We get to know Rosanna: the historical background intricacies of her career, her personal life, her weaknesses and strengths, her relationships, past and present. Even Rosanna, when trying to understand what she’s doing, says herself that, “she’s now not sure how to describe her career, except that it involved detection…“

I was gripped by this series from the start. The first book – Best Served Cold – started Rosanna Quillin’s journey as a detective. I reviewed that book here.

The second of this series, Cold In The Earth, reviewed here, revealed even more of Rosanna’s past and her own doubts, failings, and sucesses that have lead her to this point in her life.

So, I was extremely pleased to read that this third book, This Cold Night had been published.

And, now I’ve read it, I’m equally pleased to be able to recommend it. No reader who, not only enjoys crime fiction, but likes a book that brings characters to life, and a puzzle to be solved, will be disappointed

I will only add one thing – although they are stand alone books,to get the most out of the Cold Case Book series, I would suggest to anyone that they read these books in the order they were published.

The Winter of Discontent: The Background to Part Two of The Stranger in my House. #CreativeControl #Families

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Part Two of The Stranger in my House is set against what is now called the Winter of Discontent – A term that comes from Shakespeare’s play Richard III, but it was used in an interview by the then Prime Minister James Callaghan and was taken up by the media. It lasted between November 1978 to February 1979 in the United Kingdom and, following opposition from the Trades Union Congress (TUC), took on the form of widespread strikes by both the private and public sector. Trade unions demandied pay rises greater than the limits Prime Minister, James Callaghan, and his Labour Party government imposed in an effort to control inflation.

It was also the coldest winter in sixteen years. Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures disrupted transport, businesses, and energy supplies.

In January 1979 (between the 1st and the 14th), some 20,000 railwaymen held four one-day strikes. There were strikes by haulage drivers, petrol tank drivers, and eventually municipal workers – 1,250,000 of them organised a one-day national strike on 22 January 1979.

The most notorious incident was the grave diggers’ strike on Merseyside, which hit the headlines with the press vilifying trade unions for their lack of sympathy with the bereaved, and, it was argued, with the needs of the nation.

But it was a strike by refuse collectors that came to symbolise the complete breakdown of UK public services. Local councils rapidly ran out of storage space as the binmen continued to strike, so rubbish was left in streets and open public spaces instead.

Photograph courtesy of The Guardian
Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller

After the death of their mum, twins Chloe and Charlie are shocked when their dad introduces Lynne as their ‘new mummy’. Lynne, a district nurse, is trusted in the community, but the twins can see her kind smile doesn’t meet her eyes. In the months that follow they suffer the torment Lynne brings to their house as she stops at nothing in her need to be in control.

Betrayed, separated and alone, the twins struggle to build new lives as adults, but will they find happiness or repeat past mistakes? Will they discover Lynne’s secret plans for their father? Will they find each other in time?

The Stranger in My House is a gripping ‘cuckoo in the nest’ domestic thriller, exploring how coercive control can tear a family apart. Set in Yorkshire and Cardiff, from the 60s to the winter of discontent, The Stranger in My House dramatises both the cruelty and the love families hide behind closed doors.

“Judith Barrow’s greatest strength is her understanding of her characters and the times in which they live.” Terry Tyler

Grateful for this reader’s review. One of the first for The Stranger in my House, when it was published in November 2024.

Received the book today and finished it in the one sitting!

Judith Barrow’s done it again! The Stranger in My House is a book that showcases her renowned credentials. The characters are superbly drawn, the tension grows steadily and with each turn of the page your heart is gripped by the dilemmas facing the young protagonists, twins Charlie and Chloe, and their well-intentioned father. As with The Memory (shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year) it’s the way Barrow takes the ordinary and everyday, that we recognise and identify with, and skilfully uses her eye for human behaviour to turn it into something that becomes a nightmare we can readily believe in.
The story begins in 1967 and over the following decade the sense of time and place is expertly done without being intrusive. At the core of the tale is coercion and the reader can see how cleverly the others are being manipulated by the woman who undermines them and shatters their family bonds. My dislike for Lynne and her son Saul built with the book’s momentum. There was that fear that they would get away with unimaginable cruelty and malice. To counter that, were those whose innate love and kindness provided a heartwarming buffer.
From the start, I was gripped and that grip tightened inexorably. It’s becoming a cliché to say that you couldn’t put a book down – but I couldn’t. I had to know what was going to happen next. It mattered. That is the hallmark of a great author.