Moore's interests, even in his comic mood, have always tended toward the dark side of human events—terrible temptations, for example, that force a character's will to the edge of a cliff. In earlier novels, he has dealt directly with the surreal and the supernatural—in The Great Victorian Collection, a young man awakens in a California motel to find that he has dreamed into existence a huge assortment of Victorian objets d'art, and in Fergus, the Irish-born writer of the title must confront a motley gang of ghosts from his past—but in most of Brian Moore's writing, one is always aware of larger, and darker, worlds lurking just out of view.

In Cold Heaven, the world of the supernatural arrives in a burst of brilliant light that dazzles—and awes and frightens—the readers as well as the characters. (p. 3)

Cold Heaven is that most desirable sort of novel, one that keeps your hands taut on the book and your breath held tight in your chest. At the same time, the entertainment is of a very high order, filled with ideas given powerful dramatic form. Moore's intense exploration of Marie Davenport's dilemma (one of faith and conscience as well as survival and sanity), crystallizes the plight of an ordinary, modern person—a sinner, as it were—faced with extraordinary events, specifically, a miracle. If you or I were suddenly, and unwillingly, vouchsafed a glimpse of the Blessed Virgin ourselves, we would no doubt feel the same way she does.

Brian Moore is, as he has always been, a masterly writer, and Cold Heaven is word-perfect. The style is so transparent, so casually brilliant, that the events it narrates seem to be happening in real life, without the intrusion of paper and ink. Moore can paint a character in an easy stroke or two, and it is his believable characters, as well as his stunning subject matter and fascinating ideas, that give this book such tremendous suspense. And it is genuine suspense, the kind that grows out of real concern for the people involved, and out of a need to know what happens, because what happens will be hugely important. (p. 5)