A Touch of Frost

Rating:
Summary: My first Frost book won't be my last!
Review: Another frost mystery. Not so well done. This series may develop into a caricature of itself if the author is not careful about exaggerating the faults and pettiness of the commanding officers. Frost is investigating a local junkie's death, unpopular Detective Inspector Jack Frost watches things go from bad to worse as he stalks a runaway teenager, a burglar, a hit-and-run driver, and a tabloid criminal known as the Hooded Terror.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not gripping
Review: Detective Inspector "Jack" Frost is the subject of a popular television series in the UK. The character was awarded a medal for bravery (due to a foolish mistake) and dominates the TV series. Although RD Wingfield has written only four books, the many plots contained in them have been cannibalised for many episodes of the TV series.

This is the first Frost book I have read. Beginning with Frost attempting to attend a retirement party and failing as he is required to attend a number of crime scenes, it sets up a number of interlinking (and sometimes not) plots (the investigation of the death of a tramp, the disappearance of a girl, a rape inquiry). The different plots give a misleading depth to the novel, though Wingfield handles the plots reasonably (although without the mastery of James Ellroy, Ian Rankin, or Reginald Hill). However, at times there is too much happening

Wingfield, as one would expect from a former script writer for British comedian Kenneth Williams, is also a funny writer, although sometimes the jokes teeter into offensiveness.

The novel is strong on the tedium of much police procedural work, and perceptive on police politics (similar to office politics in most jobs).

However, the novel is heavily dependent on the character of Frost. Other characters fit neat stereotypes, or are too poorly drawn to give credibility, and the depth given to Frost with some subtle nuances (notably in the conclusion) merely emphasise, how two dimensional other characters are.

This is an enjoyable novel, but not gripping. It is not, to this reviewer, in the first level of modern British genre fiction.

Rating:
Summary: A Chilling Frost
Review: Detective Inspector Jack Frost of Denton CID is an aging, scruffy, undisciplined, irreverent and intuitive sleuth who manages to solve all those nasty cases that baffle his more conventional colleagues. ???A Touch of Frost???, the first in a five-novel series by playwright and former comedy writer, R.D. Wingfield, is an engrossing whirlwind of rape victims, body bags and multiple suspects that drive Frost and Webster, his newly-demoted side-kick, over four sleepless days and nights.

Utilizing plain language, expert composition and the bawdy humour that is the series??? hallmark, Wingfield deftly steers the plot???s interwoven complexities, such that the reader is immediately hooked by this irresistible page-turner. The entire cast of characters, from the odious Commander Mullett to the unwashed derelict, Wally Peters, is vividly and believably drawn. And, as befits the title, a chilling frost clings to the gruesome crime scenes and suitably shrouds the corpse-strewn town.

A word of caution, however: The relentless irreverence and grim humour that limns virtually every page of this novel are bound to offend some sensibilities and annoy others, especially those readers accustomed to drawing-room mysteries, or to the literary school of detective fiction. But for those of us with the wit and the grit, the Frost books are a refreshing and welcome throwback to an earlier style, when the protagonist was not a recovering alcoholic with dysfunctional offspring, but was simply an honest copper who went out and got the job done, with a minimum of fuss. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: R.D.WINGFIELD'S INSPECTOR FROST SERIES
Review: HAVE JUST FOUND THIS AUTHOR AND HAVE THOROUGHLY ENJOYED ALL FOUR OF HIS INSPECTOR FROST BOOKS (NIGHT FROST, FROST AT CHRISTMAS, A TOUCH OF FROST AND HARD FROST)

HIS COMIC AND SOMETIMES CRUDE ONE-LINERS KEPT ME ENTERTAINED AND GAVE ME SOME LIGHT RELIEF FROM THE SOMETIMES GRUESOME STORY LINES WHICH UNFOLD IN THESE EXCITING DETECTIVE MYSTERIES. CAN'T WAIT TO READ MORE OF HIS BOOKS. HAS ANYONE EVER READ ANY OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR OR BOOKS THAT ARE SIMILAR? HURRY AND WRITE SOME MORE MR WINGFIELD.