PAUL TEMPLE – The Tyler Mystery. Hodder, UK, hardcover, 1957. “Paul Temple” was a pseudonym of Francis Durbridge and Douglas Rutherford. Reprinted as by Francis Durbridge: Hodder, UK, pb, 1960

    A solid entry in the long running series about debonair British mystery writer Paul Temple (“By Timothy!”) and his wife and partner in solving crimes Steve (Stephanie), the former Steve Trent, a Fleet Street reporter. She and her husband solve crimes while enjoying the pleasures of the leisured upper middle class English lifestyle.

   The Temples are something of a cross between Nick and Nora Charles and the Lockridges’ Pam and Jerry North (though considerably more sober than either), with Paul himself a bit of an Ellery Queen figure (at least the radio or television versions) appearing in some fifteen books written with collaborators like Charles Hatton, John Thewes and Douglas Rutherford (appearing under the Paul Temple byline). A good deal of the charm of the series involves the byplay between the attractive husband and wife crime solvers.

   In addition to the books, there were ten radio plays and serials, movies, a television series, and a long running comic strip by Alfred Sindall and others (updated to reflect the 1969-1971 television series).

   When Betty Tyler is found stuffed in the boot of an abandoned Jaguar strangled with her own scarf on the Chipping Norton Road outside Oxford, Steve Temple, recently moved into their new Eaton Square flat with their Cockney servant Charlie, knows Sir Graham Forbes of the Yard is likely to show up at any time to ask her mystery writer husband’s help, interfering with her plans for a trip to Paris to celebrate Paul’s latest book deal.

   Sure enough, Forbes (“a splendid example of an Englishman”) shows up on their doorstep with Oxford Constabulary Inspector Vosper in tow.

   Paul and Steve agree to do a favor for Forbes, but still are intent on keeping out of the whole thing and making that Paris holiday — which Steve emphasizes by humming “I love Paris” at key times when Paul is tempted to defect, but after a suspicious near accident on the way to investigate Paul and Steve can no longer avoid involvement. Especially after a call from Jane Dallas — whom Paul finds strangled in the bedroom of her flat.

   All the victims work for a chain of beauty salons owned by the mysterious fashionable Spaniard Mariano (“a drink like a prophet is never honoured in its own country”).

   Paul and Steve investigate and capture the strangler, but Paul knows the man with the scarves is only the front for the man behind the murders, and in true style throws a dinner party to gather the suspects and expose the killer with a flourish. There is even a bit of a surprise in the killer’s identity and of course a touch of drama in the capture.

   There is nothing surprising about the Temple books. They are competently written, feature a bit of mystery, a bit of detection, and considering their radio serial origin, contain a good deal of action and suspense.

   Four movies featured Paul and Steve Temple, with Anthony Hulme and Joy Shelton in Send For Paul Temple (1946), and John Bentley (who also played John Creasey’s the Toff in two outings) and Dinah Sheridan in Calling Paul Temple (1948) Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950), and Paul Temple Returns (1952), all directed by Maclean Rogers, who directed the two Toff films as well. (In Returns, Patricia Dainton replaced Dinah Sheridan as Steve.)

   I’ve seen Calling Paul Temple, and it is an entertaining B picture with some nice location photography in Cambridge, some solid thrills, and builds to a good climax.

   Francis Matthews (Dracula, Prince of Darkness and the voice of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s “Captain Scarlet”) played Temple and Ros Drinkwater Steve in the 64 episode Temple series co-produced with Germany’s ZDF (1969-1971). In addition in the mid sixties several of the radio serials and books were done for British and German television. Eleven episodes of the color episodes of the Temple series are available on DVD as of 2009.

   Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was the Levinson and Link of British television. His popular serials included The Teckman Biography, The World of Tim Frazer, Melanie, Operation Diplomat, Portrait of Alison, The Scarf, and others. Most were also books.

   In addition his non Temple serials inspired films such as The Teckman Mystery, Postmark to Danger (Portrait of Alison), and the The Vicious Circle. His other series character, Tim Fraser, is featured in three books.

   The original ten Paul Temple radio serials are available as CD’s (a pricey Omnibus edition of all ten serials is well worth the price for the sheer hours of entertainment). In addition, there have been new productions as late as 2006, making a total of some twenty-seven Temple radio productions from 1938 to date.

   Postmark to Danger and at least one of the Temple movies are available on DVD on the gray market. Of the films, Postmark to Danger stars Robert Beatty and Terry Moore, and The Vicious Circle (1957) with John Mills, Roland Culver, Lionel Jeffries, Derek Farr, and Mervyn Johns has showed up on TCM several times and is well worth catching.

   Douglas Rutherford, the best of the Durbridge collaborators, and the only one to write as Paul Temple, was a first class action-suspense novelist whose own books were compared to Dick Francis. The novels under his own name always feature a background of racing cars and motorcycles, though the plots varied from crime, to murder, to spy-jinks. Barzun and Taylor had a few nice things to say of them in Catalogue of Crime.

   The Paul Temple books may sometimes show their origins as radio drama, but they offer pleasant thrills with an attractive pair of sleuths, and a bit of well done suspense and often clever mysteries.

   All of Durbridge’s books are worth reading, and hopefully more of the television serials will be finding their way onto DVD sets. When a German comic revealed the name of the killer in the German airing of The World of Tim Fraser, there was a major uproar.

   A modern American audience may not get quite that involved, but skillfully done fare along the lines of Durbridge’s radio and television serials, series, movies, and books are not to be sneezed at. These are well worth discovering and enjoying.

Editorial Comment:  Prompting the immediate posting of this review which David just sent me was, of course, my preceding review of Melissa, one of Durbridge’s many story productions for BBC-TV. The availability of the Paul Temple TV shows on DVD just a few months ago has only strengthened myresolve to obtain a multi-region player. The set is Region 2 only.

FIONA BUCKLEY – To Shield the Queen. Scribner, hardcover; first edition, November 1997. Paperback reprint: Pocket; 1st printing, October 1998. UK edition: Orion, hc, as The Robsart Mystery.

    A solid introduction for the Ursula Blanchard series, set at the court of Elizabeth I. Blanchard, a young widow with a daughter she must provide for, has just been made a Lady in Waiting in the Court of Elizabeth I, thanks to her ties to Sir William Cecil , the Secretary of State. While her job is to serve the queen, her keen eyes and bright mind soon find her with more important duties.

    The year is 1560, and Lord Robert Dudley, Master of Horse to the young Queen, is one of her favorites, and rumors are rife about his relationship with the queen.

    When Dudley’s wife, Lady Ivy, falls ill Ursula is dispatched to help care for her — and keep an eye on a dangerous scandal that could develop if, as some suspect, Lady Ivy Dudley is being poisoned to take her out of the way for the furthering of the queen’s romance.

    And when Ivy Dudley falls to her death in a suspicious manner, Ursula finds herself at the heart of a conspiracy against the throne involving a handsome Frenchman and traitors in the Court. Her heart and her courage are about to be severely tested as is her loyalty to the queen. And Ursula will go to extraordinary lengths to both guard her monarch and the Frenchman she loves and marries — not entirely voluntarily.

    Buckley smoothly blends history and fiction with a heroine who navigates the treacheries of the Tudor court with intelligence courage and wisdom.

    Whether her solution to the real murder (or not) of Lady Dudley bears any relation to reality, it is in the best tradition of historical mystery, and the depictions of both fictional and historical figures are well done, especially a human portrait of Elizabeth as both woman and monarch.

    Ursula protects her monarch and the realm, saves her new husband, and secures a unique position with both the Queen and her court as well as winning the respect of the Spanish Ambassador who will play more important role in later books.

    For fans of historical mysteries, this one is a pleasant discovery, and Ursula Blanchard a protagonist who is both pleasingly modern yet true to her time and place. An excellent debut for a well-written series.

       The Ursula Blanchard Series —

   1. The Robsart Mystery (1997), aka To Shield the Queen.
   2. The Doublet Affair (1998)

   3. Queen’s Ransom (1999)
   4. To Ruin a Queen (2000)

   5. Queen of Ambition (2001)
   6. A Pawn for the Queen (2002)

   7. The Fugitive Queen (2003)
   8. The Siren Queen (2004)

PHIL RICKMAN – The Smile of a Ghost. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, Nov 2005; Macmillan-Pan, UK, Nov 2006. Imported & sold in the US under the Trafalgar Square imprint.

   Merrily Watkins is a female Anglican priest. She’s also the diocesan exorcist, but there are elements within the local church that have little faith in her “calling,” and as she attempts to deal with a series of deaths of teenagers — deaths that may be something other than accidental — her special skills are put to tests that could end her special role in the church.

   Merrily has a daughter, a lover, and a belief in the importance of her role. She’s no conventional cleric, and in spite of her role as an exorcist, this is no retread of the usual horrific events associated with this rite.

   Most of the atrocities that are committed in the course of the novel are all too human in origin, although there’s a bit of flirting with the supernatural that may put off the conventional mystery reader. Merrily works within the church, with the local townspeople and in an uneasy alliance, with the local police, trying to keep her footing, not always successfully, among these often opposing elements.

   I’ll probably want to try another of the series. It satisfies two of my chief requirements for good mystery: a well-characterized protagonist and a well drawn setting. As for the meshing and weaving of these elements into a compelling plot, I can only say that if I wasn’t mesmerized by the telling (as the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer claimed to be), I wasn’t put off by it either.

   The series, at the least, merits another chance.

       The Merrily Watkins series —

    1. The Wine of Angels (1998)

    2. Midwinter of the Spirit (1999)
    3. A Crown of Lights (2001)
    4. The Cure of Souls (2001)

    5. The Lamp of the Wicked (2002)
    6. The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (2004)

    7. The Smile of a Ghost (2005)
    8. The Remains of an Altar (2006)
    9. The Fabric of Sin (2007)
   10. To Dream of the Dead (2008)

JONATHAN VALIN – Final Notice. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1980. Paperback reprints: Avon, 1982; Dell, 1994. TV movie: USA, 1989 (with Gil Gerard, Steve Landsberg, Melody Anderson).

   I’m a little behind. This is the second adventure of private eye Harry Stoner — it’s just now in paperback — and the third is already out, begging to be read.

   The metaphor is apt. If anything, I found this one even more readable than The Lime Pit, which started to get more and more funny-tasting the deeper Stoner began to dig into the corruption surrounding the city of Cincinnati.

   There is more of the same in this one, plus lots of gore. Stoner is called in when a psychopath starts slashing up nudes in a library’s collection of art books. He thinks it’s only a prelude to the real thing.

   At his side in tackling this case is a library security guard named Kate Davis, who is both female and liberated. She makes Stoner feels old and tired at thirty-seven, old-fashioned and chauvinistic. Kate is of a younger generation, and falling in love with her leaves Stoner feeling slightly bewildered. He is also pleased.

   Valin has a fine feeling for what makes people what they are — not just the killer, but everyone. The constant attempts to psychoanalyze the killer could have been downplayed a little, and Valin doesn’t quite catch the same edge that exists between human relationships that Robert B. Parker usually does, but as a mixture of character study and action adventure, it is seldom done any better than this.

   The fast and furious climax works out almost the way you’d expect it to, but the twist that comes with it just might catch you leaning the wrong way.

[UPDATE] 10-27-09. Jonathan Valin wrote eleven Harry Stoner books over a period of 15 years, which is a pretty good run, but one I think should have been longer. I confess, though, that while I have all of the books in the series, I’ve never gotten around to the later ones. (I believe I’ve read all of the first seven.)

   But as to why the series ended, the usual guesses are as valid here as they are for many other authors. Sales may have fallen and/or Valin simply ran out of things to say about the character.

   Until I discovered it again just now, I’d totally forgotten that there was a TV movie based on this book. What’s strange is that I simply don’t remember if I watched it at the time or not. It’s not available on DVD, as far as I’ve been able to tell, so I just bought it as an out-of-print video tape. The reviews on IMDB (only 2 of them) aren’t very positive. The big complaint is that it was filmed in Toronto, not Cincinnati!

       The Harry Stoner series —

    1. The Lime Pit (1980)
    2. Final Notice (1980)
    3. Dead Letter (1981)

    4. Day of Wrath (1982)
    5. Natural Causes (1983)
    6. Life’s Work (1986)
    7. Fire Lake (1987)

    8. Extenuating Circumstances (1989)
    9. Second Chance (1991)
   10. The Music Lovers (1993)
   11. Missing (1995)

M. K. WREN – Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey. Doubleday, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   When Corey Benbow, half owner of a kite making business, meets a tragic fate in a late night accident on the ruggedly beautiful Oregon coast, Conan Flagg is neither surprised nor fooled. He knows murder when he sees it.

   Flagg was the first series creation of Pacific Coast novelist Wren, who has also written a science fiction trilogy, mainstream fiction, and a second series about Neely Jones, a small town law officer in the same Oregon coastal setting she long lived in.

   Flagg is something of a paragon of virtues and skills, a sort of liberal Northwest Coast take on Travis McGee. He’s the scion of a wealthy ranching family, owner and proprietor of the Holiday Beach Bookstore, and a licensed private investigator.

   He is also darkly handsome with striking, almost oriental eyes, thanks to a mixed blood heritage. He lives by himself, of his own choice, in a fabulous house on the beach, and is frequently drawn into other people’s troubles, bringing the skills he learned in military intelligence in Cold War Berlin to bear.

   Beautiful Corey Benbow had enemies– mostly the family of Benbow patriarch Gabe Benbow, her father-in-law. Corey is the mother of the son the Benbows want to carry on the family name and heritage, and worse, a thorn in the side of their plans to sell a wildlife refuge known as the Spit as a housing development.

   There’s not much doubt her killer is one of the six Benbows present on the night of her accident, when she left after a confrontation about the fate of the Spit. The only question is which of the six Benbows killed her.

   Although he’s a far cry from Travis McGee, in many ways Flagg has a tendency to use the same high handed tactics and doesn’t mind bending or even breaking laws in the name of justice — or vengeance.

   To be honest, I’ve liked other entries in this series better than this one. The big confrontation at the end seems contrived and rings false, and Flagg comes across as the most self-satisfied and smug sleuth since the heyday of Philo Vance in his righteous wrath. An act of God at the end that was probably meant as irony simply seems heavy handed and pasted on to bring a satisfactory ending to the proceedings.

   It may be the McGee-like justice figures work better in the first person where we are privy to all their thoughts and feelings. With a third person narration, such as Wren uses, the added distance from the protagonist is enough that you may find yourself asking how he is much better than the bad guys, other than his motives.

   Flagg reveals the killer with a particularly nasty bit of business that Vance or McGee would likely have drawn the line at, and one even Mike Hammer might have found a bit outside the bounds.

   That said, Wren is a fine writer. The Oregon setting is handsomely presented and if Flagg is at times a bit full of himself, he is presented as a well developed creation. The motives and plot elements are well handled, and only the denouement is a disappointment, a bit contrived, melodramatic, and frankly preposterous.

   Put it this way: you wouldn’t have accepted it as the ending of seventies television mystery series, much less in a novel.

   Darlin’ Corey is a minor entry in the Conan Flagg series. It’s worth reading, but only if you have read some of the others first and gained some affection for the writer and the series. Don’t skip this one by any means, but don’t let it be your introduction to Wren or Flagg either. She has done much better and so has he.

   Note: The title is taken from the 1941 song “Darlin’ Corey” by John A. and Alan Lomax:

        The Conan Flagg series —

    Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat. Doubleday 1973.

    A Multitude of Sins. Doubleday 1975.
    Oh, Bury Me Not. Doubleday 1976.
    Nothing’s Certain But Death. Doubleday 1978.
    Seasons of Death. Doubleday 1981.
    Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey. Doubleday 1984.
    Dead Matter. Ballantine 1993.

    King of the Mountain. Ballantine 1995.

LAURENCE GOUGH – Serious Crimes.

Viking Press, US/Canada; hardcover, 1990. Paperback reprint: Penguin, Canada, 1991. British editions: Gollancz, hc, 1990; pb, 1992 (shown).

   As far as police procedurals go, if they’re published in Canada by a Canadian author, not to mention ones that take place in Vancouver, BC, they might as well have never been written at all, as far as American readers are concerned. Generally speaking, of course.

   Which is not to say that none of Laurence Gough’s thirteen books in his “Willows and Parker” series have not been published in the US, but most of them haven’t, or if they have, it was barely.

   Take the test for yourself (assuming you live in the US). Take a look at the thirteen books below, for some of which the covers have been provided, and see how many of them you recognize. An easier test: Raise your right hand if you’ve heard of Laurence Gough. I hope you have, but I have a feeling that he’s all but unknown in this country.

   There is a little bit of soap opera going on along with the cases that Jack Willows and his partner Claire Parker are assigned to. Just how much, I couldn’t tell you, as this is the first one of them I’ve happened to read. But in the opening few chapters of Serious Crimes, Willows’ wife has left him, along with their two kids, and he’s getting ready to sell his house.

   There is something going on, I think, between him and Parker, but if it is, it’s awfully subtle and/or it simply doesn’t come up this time. A little investigation on my part has revealed, however, that things heat up in the books that follow. Parker, by the way, is all but completely invisible in this book. She’s always around whenever Willows is; other cops look at her when she’s with Willows with ogling eyes, and that’s about it. Tune in for more next time, or so it appears.

   Dead is a local Chinese businessman, found frozen in a pond covered with several layers of ice. A botched kidnaping? It looks like it. Interspersed with the two cops’ investigation are the adventures of two young hoodlums, one of whom falls in lust with one of his victims, a bored housewife who seems (unknown to him) to have similar feelings about her attacker.

   There’s not much in the way of detection involved, which is par for the course as far as work of most homicide cops is concerned. But the tale the author weaves is as gripping as it is understated, as paradoxical as that may sound. The case (or cases) are never boring, and more, at least one of them ends in a blazing hell-raiser of a finale.

      The Willows and Parker series —

    1. The Goldfish Bowl (1987)

    2. Death on a No. 8 Hook (1988)
    3. Hot Shots (1989)
    4. Serious Crimes (1990)
    5. Accidental Deaths (1991)

    6. Fall Down Easy (1992)
    7. Killers (1993)
    8. Heartbreaker (1995)

    9. Memory Lane (1996)
   10. Karaoke Rap (1997)

   11. Shutterbug (1998)
   12. Funny Money (2000)
   13. Cloud of Suspects (2003)

MARK GATISS – The Vesuvius Club: A Bit of Fluff. Simon & Schuster, UK, hardcover, November 2004; Scribner’s; US, trade pb, October 2005.

   So speaks Lucifer Box (“I have a horror of artichokes.”), Edwardian portraitist, and His Majesty’s most daring — and decadent — secret agent, spy, and when the need arises, assassin, the hero of Mark Gatiss’s novel of mystery, conspiracy, dirty doings, and — of course a threat to the future of the Western world and particularly the waning sun of the British Empire post Victoria.

   Box, who lives at Number 9 Downing Street (because somebody has to), has been assigned to find the missing agent Jocelyn Utterson Poop aided by his hench-woman and nude model Delilah, who has just helped him dispose of his late luncheon guest Everard Supple, a treasonous diplomat:

   The decidedly bi-sexual Box is dispatched by his chief (Joshua Reynolds, a dwarf who gives out his assignments from a bathroom, “Three foot something in his stocking feet and ever so jolly.”) to a case involving the beautiful Miss Bella Pok, his boy assistant handsome Charlie Jackson, and the grizzled vulcanologist Emmanuel Quibble, as well as poisoned centipedes, foggy London chases, kidnapped scientists, and a plot to set off Mount Vesuvius by a Neapolitan secret criminal society.

   It’s a wild chase, equal parts Oscar Wilde, Fu Manchu, H.P. Lovecraft,. Monty Python, The Avengers, James Bond, and Austin Powers. The tale is spun by Gatiss, an award winning star and co-creator of the British comedy, The League of Gentlemen and sometime writer for Doctor Who, in a perfectly toned voice that sparkles with witty epigrams and playful adventure.

   Of course you may find Lucifer Box a bit of a scoundrel, but his raffish adventures among the seedier side of the Edwardian demimonde are outlandishly entertaining and addictive.

   There is even a twist in the tale of near poetic justice for our hero. Which of course he escapes — you can’t very well succumb in the first book in a series. Simply bad taste, that.

   And you’ll be smiling too, though perhaps not as dashed devilishly. A tasty and charming bit of fluff, exactly the thing for a cold winter’s night.

       The Lucifer Box series —

    1. The Vesuvius Club (2004)
    2. The Devil in Amber (2006)
    3. Black Butterfly (2008)

LISA LUTZ – The Spellman Files. Simon & Schuster, hardcover; First Edition: March 2007. Trade paperback: February 2008. Mass market pb: Pocket, January 2009.

   This darkly humorous series debut is told in the first person from the point of view of Isabel Spellman, a P.I. in her family’s San Francisco firm.

   The organization of this book is a post-modern revelation. Ostensibly it’s a series of reports in the case file that Isabel produces as she’s trying to track down her missing 14-year-old sister Rae, who is already skilled in certain investigative techniques.

   In the process, a cold case from her parents’ archives also comes into play. There are sections and subdivisions, rather than traditional chapters. The text utilizes footnotes, varying type fonts, and passages of script-like dialogue.

   This organized chaos accurately maps Isabel’s character — as an investigator, she’s trained to record everything, and she does so obsessively, in part because she’s a bit of a basket case. A fantastic academic challenge would be to try to outline the various chunks of the novel; I may yet try to do this.

   Have I mentioned this book is very funny? Although the 14-year-old has disappeared, no kidnap is involved. In the end, it’s not a traditional crime novel at all; it’s a portrait of a very quirky family, as seen by its most messed-up member.

       The Spellman series —

    1. The Spellman Files (2007)
    2. Curse of the Spellmans (2008)
    3. Revenge of the Spellmans (2009)

    4. The Spellmans Strike Again (March 2010)

ROBERT GREER – The Devil’s Hatband. Frog Books, trade paperback, September 2004. Originally published by Mysterious Press, hardcover: March 1996; paperback: March 1997.

   CJ Floyd, a Denver African-American bail bondsman, is also a bounty hunter who goes after bondskippers, but the job he takes on in this first of a series is something quite different, the search for the missing daughter of a black federal judge.

   According to two men to who show up in CJ’s office, Brenda Mathison had joined the Grand River Tribe, a splinter group of what the two men call a “loony” environmental organization, PlanetFirst, then disappeared with a document that belonged to the men’s employer, Carson Technologies, a veterinary research organization.

   Something seems fishy to CJ, but with a sizable bonus promised if she’s found and the document returned within 30 days, he’s willing to take on the job.

   When CJ heads into the back country where Brenda was last known to be living, he finds that somebody else has already found her, a sheriff who’s discovered her body.

   As CJ continues his investigation of what has become an even more sensitive case, he learns that the Grand River Tribe is planning to destroy the Western cattle industry, and the connection with on Technologies involves a deadly virus that can wipe out not only a good portion of the cattle industry but untold numbers of people as well.

   This tense techno-thriller shifts back and forth between the search for the murderer or murderers of Brenda and an attempt to thwart the terrorist attack, CJ’s business in Denver, his ties to the black community, his uneasy alliance with the other bail bondsmen, and a threat posed by a local gangleader who has it in for him.

   CJ is also a collector, most notably of vintage license plates (hence, I suppose, the introduction by bookman and mystery writer Dunning for the Frog edition), and the narrative pace moves at times with gut-wrenching speed, then slows down for a more leisurely take on aspects of CJ’s life that have no direct connection with the Mathison case.

   CJ Floyd is one of the best-drawn and most interesting fictional characters I’ve come across recently, one that I hope to spend more time with in the future.

       The CJ Floyd series —

1. The Devil’s Hatband (1996)
2. The Devil’s Red Nickel (1997)

3. The Devil’s Backbone (1998)
4. Resurrecting Langston Blue (2005)

5. The Fourth Perspective (2006)
6. The Mongoose Deception (2007)

7. Blackbird, Farewell (2008)

R. D. [RODNEY] WINGFIELD – Frost at Christmas. PaperJacks, Canada, paperback original, 1984; 2nd printing, 1987. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1989. Bantam, US, pb, 1995.

   For a lover of detective stories I have to admit that I haven’t kept up with present day (or, at any rate, fairly recent) authors. This is not a plan, but a function of a slow reading rate and other things demanding attention.

   I have confessed several times to a close friend about not reading Wingfield, and he has always told me that I should. Of course I have watched and enjoyed all the episodes of the TV series but was aware that that series was not favoured by the author himself.

   I actually bought this paperback edition for 10 cents at Haslam’s bookstore in St Petersburg, Florida, on a visit in the early 1990s and finally I’ve read it.

   When the smoothly efficient Inspector Allen is taken ill, Frost has to take on the search for a missing 8-year-old girl, and his investigation keeps blundering into other cases, including a 32-year-old case of the murder of a bank worker and a missing £20.000.

   The story is told is short pithy passages and often from the viewpoint of Detective Constable Clive Barnard, the Chief Constable’s nephew who had been assigned to Denton C.I.D. for his first appointment and was accompanying Frost in his investigations.

   I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book for a while and the first 100 pages shot by. After that, familiarity maybe set in for a while, but I still happily turned the pages, though without quite the same eagerness, until the end, 184 pages later. Still, overall it was an enjoyable read, and I will look out for a cheap copy of the second in the series, A Touch of Frost.

      The Detective Inspector Jack Edward Frost series —

    Frost at Christmas (1984)
    A Touch of Frost (1987)
    Night Frost (1992)
    Hard Frost (1995)
    Winter Frost (1999)
    A Killing Frost (2008)