Sun 4 Dec 2016
A Christmas Review by William F. Deeck: R. D. WINGFIELD – Frost at Christmas.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
William F. Deeck
R. D. WINGFIELD – Frost at Christmas. PaperJacks, Canada, paperback original, 1984. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1989. Bantam, paperback, 1st US printing, 1995.
When the eight-year-old daughter of a young woman no better than she should be and who collects money for doing it goes missing ten days before Christmas in one of England’s worst winters, the Denton constabulary is organized splendidly for the search. Then misfortune puts Detective Inspector Jack Frost’s fine example of the Peter Principle, in charge. As Frost reflects: “He wasn’t bloody Gideon of the Yard, he was Detective Inspector Jack Frost, G.C., jumped up from being a lousy sergeant to a lousier inspector. He hadn’t asked for promotion.”
Not an organizer, Frost, to give him credit beyond his due, but a good detective of the old school. At one point, Frost says: “All I want is a suspect. Forget this ‘innocent until proved guilty’ caper. Find your suspect and then prove he or she did it. Saves sodding about with lots of different people.”
Those who enjoy Jack S. Scott’s Rosher, or Reginald Hill’s Dalziel, or even Joyce Porter’s Dover, should appreciate Frost, who has Rosher’s doggedness, Dalziel’s cunning, and Dover’s sloppiness. If this novel had been released by a publisher with better distribution, it could well have been a nominee for best original paperback in 1984. It deserves republishing.
Bibliographic Notes: Five years later, this, the first in the Inspector Frost series, as Bill suggested it should been, was finally published in hardcover in England, then some time after that by Bantam in the US. Bantam also put out the next three in the series, but they seem to have bailed out on the fifth and sixth, which appeared only in the UK.
After Wingfield’s death in 2007, four more Inspector Frost books were published as by James Henry (James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton), prompted by the popularity of the TV series based on the books, A Touch of Frost (2004-2009), starring David Jason. A full list of the TV episodes may be found here.
December 4th, 2016 at 2:47 pm
I loved these books, watching him try to avoid any work and take every shortcut he could was a blast.
The true firsts of this book (1984 pbo or UK version from 1989) are both pretty darn pricey.
I think the later James Henry books were written by James Gurbutt, with Henry Sutton only helping on the first one or two.
December 4th, 2016 at 8:12 pm
According to Wikipedia, you’re right about Sutton being a collaborator on the first of the James Henry books only. I also learned that until Inspector Frost came along, Wingfield was much more well known as a writer of radio plays, or at least he was in England.
He wrote this first Frost novel in 1972, but it was rejected by Macmillan. How he managed to get it published by PaperJacks, an obscure little Canadian outfit in 1984, they do not say. I wonder if it made any splash at all, but as I pointed out in the note I added at the end of the review, it somehow managed to get picked up and published again, first in hardcover in the UK, then in paperback in the US.
When it did come out in the US, I remember picking up a copy at Borders, looking through it, and putting it back on the shelf. I’d had enough of irascible and semi-incompetent British detectives at the time, I thought, and whether that description fit or not, I passed it by.
December 4th, 2016 at 8:59 pm
A pretty interesting article by Mike Ripley of SHOTS ezine about Rodney Wingfield (hopefully the link works)
http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/feature_view.aspx?FEATURE_ID=43
December 4th, 2016 at 9:40 pm
Very informative and wonderfully written — no surprise there. Thanks, David!
December 5th, 2016 at 8:55 pm
Never a Frost fan. He’s not as competent as Dalziel or as obnoxious as Dover. The series just felt derivative to me, and while I liked David Jason well enough the series just rubbed me wrong.