Cold Comforts

From the introduction: The Good Book’ is a more straightforward PI yarn which, again, was an almost obscene amount of fun to write. ‘The Cost of Freedom' had to cover the suspicious circumstances of Marilyn Monroe’s death and had to include something about JFK But every now and then I get a specific request to set a story in England—‘Cat On An Old School Roof ’and ‘The Allotment’ are 2 such, in an archetypal English boarding school in the 1890s . . . complete with an obligatory school bully and, of course, a cat. ‘The Allotment’ was a request f to write something quintessentially North English that transferred to England the American small town darkness and meticulously researched social detail of Stephen King, mixing in a liberal dose of Peter Lovesey’s slowly unveiling suspense-style in the process. For many, the abuse of children is the most heinous crime imaginable . . . even more horrific and unforgivable, in its brutal theft of innocence, than the taking of actual life. ‘A Time To Dance’ Koko Tate take on a cycle of retribution which he believes to be the only hope for a young boy . ‘The Main Event’ has as its central premise a most unusual method of poisoning. First Lady Murders was the title of an anthology of (yes, you’ve guessed it) of murder stories featuring real First Ladies. When the Berlin Wall came down, I foresaw problems and wrote ‘Reunification’. Which brings us to the final story in this book. ‘Cold Comforts’ was, I think, either my third or fourth Koko story. We’d just gotten through a particularly hard winter in England, with news reports filled with true horror stories of old people dying of hypothermia in unheated homes and run-down tenements. I got to thinking about old folks—which, so long as we don’t die young, we’ll all be ourselves one fine day—and about maybe someone taking responsibility for their ‘comfort’ into their own hands.