A Touch of Frost

by R.D. Wingfield

Book Overview

'A funny, frantic, utterly refreshing brew' - Sunday Telegraph

Detective Inspector Jack Frost, officially on duty, is nevertheless determined to sneak off to a colleague's leaving party. But first the corpse of a well-known local junkie is found blocking the drain of a Denton public lavatory - and then the daughter of a wealthy businessman is reported missing.

And now a wave of crime threatens to submerge sleepy...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553571699
• ISBN13: 9780553571691
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Bantam
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.1" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

A great British mystery series

This is my third Inspector Frost novel and it is a good one. DI "Jack" Frost is a curmudgeonly detective in the Denton police force and has his hands full investigating a variety of crimes. In each book, Frost usually has several different crimes he has to solve. This time it is a missing teenager, stolen coins, a hit and run murder, and a serial rapist. He has help from either a new detective sargent or detective constable. This character is different in each book it seems. These are not graphic, high action novels but rather a laid back mystery which is intriguing and suspenseful and requires using a little of the gray matter to enjoy. Highly recommended.

A Chilling Frost

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.

R.D.WINGFIELD'S INSPECTOR FROST SERIES

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.

An Unexpectedly Entertaining Read!

I have watched without any great enjoyment the televised A & E mystery series featuring DI Frost, and I therefore found myself disinclined to read any of Wingfield's work. However, I picked up a copy of A Touch of Frost on my way out of the library one day, and I found (much to my surprise) that I truly enjoyed the novel!I am now looking forward to reading other books by R.D. Wingfield, and I would recommend this particular book to anyone who enjoys British mysteries. This book is humorous and fast-paced, and the hard-nosed DI Frost is made less obnoxious and much more bearable by way of his dry sense of humour and an unpretentious intolerance of sycophants and their political maneuvering.This was definitely an unexpected find!

Gritty and Entertaining!

I absolutely loved this book. I could not put it down. All of this author's books are great. If you love Cracker or other mysteries like them. Read this one, you will not regret it!