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FIRST FROST
by James Henry
Bantam, January 2011
400 pages
12.99 GBP
ISBN: 0593065344


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Prequels are never an easy trick to pull off, especially when the subject is none other than R.D.Wingfield's Jack Frost, who is seen here during his early days in crime-infested Denton, the elephant's graveyard of police officers, according to its detractors. The book is co-written by James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton (writing as James Henry) who make a very good job of producing a novel in Wingfield's style without descending into a bad pastiche. I've read and enjoyed the original Frost books, although I did find them extremely formulaic, but there's an argument in favour of keeping to what is clearly a popular formula, which is what James Henry have done.

The book is set in 1981, as evidenced by mentions of Margaret Thatcher, the recession (a familiar theme at the moment) and a country troubled by the activities of the IRA. Jack Frost appears here as a Detective Sergeant. He's already putting his marriage at risk by his addiction to police work and is constantly demonstrating his healthy disregard to paperwork in general and Superintendent Stanley Mullett's crime clear-up statistics in particular, a theme that will be familiar to readers of Frost's later adventures. When the story starts, Denton police station, here undergoing refurbishment with liberal doses of magnolia paint, is seriously understaffed. Frost's mentor, DI Bert Williams, has gone missing, another DI is on holiday, uncontactable, and so Frost finds himself in the position of most senior investigating officer when a 12-year-old girl disappears.

Denton, true to form, soon turns into a hotbed of crime, both major and minor, some connected, some not, and the trick for both Frost and the reader lies in working out what is a red herring and what isn't. For most of the time in the book, I felt like I'd made a return to an old – and loved – stamping ground. Frost's future antagonist, Mullett, is quickly established in his role. Frost himself is as irreverent and engaging as ever and the book contains enough surprise twists and turns to maintain interest. Where it fails, for me, lies in what is both its strength and its weakness: the portrayal of Frost himself. This is very definitely the Frost of Wingfield's own books, but what he isn't, is the younger Frost that we should be seeing. This book is meant to be set approximately three years before FROST AT CHRISTMAS, in which Jack Frost made his debut as a Detective Inspector, but in this prequel the only differences appears to be that of rank, and the fact that both he and his wife are described as being in their mid-30s. We are told that this is Frost at an earlier stage of his career, but are never adequately shown the differences. That minor niggle aside, I did enjoy the book. It provided a very enjoyable outing with an old friend, and does appear to have been left open for a sequel, so expect more from this stable in the future.

§ Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.

Reviewed by Linda Wilson, February 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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