The R.D. Wingfield version of Frost that is (not the cold white stuff on the ground), I recently started to "flick read" HARD FROST for an upcoming discussion one of my two favourite online reading groups - 4MA (4_Mystery_Addicts).
This was to have been a quick re-read, reminding myself of the main plot points so I could join in the book discussion and have something vaguely meaningful to contribute. But I didn't plan on reading the entire book again. Funny how the best laid plans etc, because I found myself thoroughly drawn in and I re-read the book from scratch. Sure I could remember the main plot points, but the book is just so addictive, the characters so vivid and the story involving enough that it didn't really matter that I sought of knew what was coming - the story itself was enough.
R.D. Wingfield didn't write many of these books alas, although there is one due to be published posthumously. The TV Series is very good, with David Jason playing a slightly softer, slightly less abrasive version of the Frost character that Wingfield wrote, but if you haven't seen the Series on TV or read any of these books, then I can highly recommend that you give them a go.
A young boy is found dead in a rubbish sack, suffocated and with one finger cut off. Another boy, Bobby Kirby, is missing. A psychopath is stabbing babies as they lie sleeping in their cots. A fifteen-year-old has been abducted, then found naked by the roadside. The corpse of petty criminal is discovered, with the tops of three fingers chopped off. The small children of a carpet-fitter is murdered; his wife's body is found on the railway line. A supermarket MD is sent a ransom demand for the missing boy Bobby, accompanied by one of the child's fingers.
DI Jack Frost, scruffy and insubordinate, foul-mouthed and fearless, staggers from crisis to crisis, his bumbling modus operandi disguising his extraordinary powers of detection.