‘This Cold Night’ by Thorne Moore

Independently published,
26 April 2026.
ISBN: 979-825596833-3 (PB)

One of those much-quoted axioms of crime fiction is that it's the plot that keeps you reading one book, but the characters who leave you desperate for the next.  Thorne Moore has discovered a talent for both; once you've read one book with her name on the cover, a new one becomes a must-have, to follow the fate of new people or the fortunes of familiar ones. 

This Cold Night is the third in a series featuring former detective constable Rosanna Quillan. Rosanna left the police when she realized getting a result had become more important than serving justice. She has discovered a talent of her own, for tracking down missing persons, and with the help of computer-whizz Gethin Matthews, who has become her life-partner, she sets about trying to find what became of Lianne, who left home at sixteen uncared-for and unmissed. 

The story she pieces together is full of surprises, which it would be a shame to give away. None of the characters she encounters are what they seem, all the way from Lianne's aunt who sets the ball rolling to the final reveal which I guarantee will leave you open-mouthed. 

And therein lies Thorne Moore's secret – the characters. They all have pasts, and lives away from the page, and even the most minor of them has a personality. There's a body, as befits a crime novel, and there's more than one mystery to solve, but at its heart the book is about family. Since the last in the series Rosanna has found a stable family to replace the bullied and abused mother she lost and the father she despises. Gethin is a gentle giant who gave up city life to care for his father who has dementia. Rosanna now lives in their welcoming farmhouse home and helps with the caring. 

Elsewhere there are different kinds of family, some the right kind with warmth and support, others with less positive agendas. It's hard to describe the plethora of other players who people them without giving the game away; suffice to say they are all meticulously drawn, from misguided coppers to trusting landlords and everyone in between. Locations are equally well realized: large houses which offer different kinds of welcome, an extensive millionaire-style estate, small towns and large ones.  

Thorne Moore's last venture into series fiction was a self-contained science fiction trilogy. With the Cold Cases series she has returned to her comfort zone of domestic noir – and this time she has created a pair of leading characters with the potential to run and run. I for one sincerely hope they do.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick 

Thorne Moore grew up in Luton, near London, but has lived in Pembrokeshire in West Wales for the last 40 years. She writes psychological crime, or domestic noir, often with an historical twist, focusing on the cause and consequences of crimes rather than on the details of the crimes themselves. A Time for Silence, set in Pembrokeshire, was published by Honno in 2012. It was followed by Motherlove and The Unravelling, set partly in a fictional version of Luton. Shadows, published by Lume in 2017, is set in an old house in Pembrokeshire, and is paired with Long Shadows, which explains the history and mysteries of the same house from Medieval times to the late Victorian period. Her latest crime novel, Fatal Collision, published by Diamond Crime in 2022, is set on the Pembrokeshire coast.  

https://www.thornemoore.co.uk/  

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.