“I am just a natural sodder upper and nothing’s going to change me.”Frost at Christmas was written in 1984 and in many ways it shows its age. This is time when police still used cassette tapes as cutting edge technology, drove Morris patrol cars, hand wrote interviews, typed their reports, ran mail rooms where they send off requisitions to forensics and smoke up a blue storm within the station. It all has the gritty, realistic feel of the early Bill TV show. Mind you, our eponymous hero, Detective Inspector Jack Frost comes across as a dinosaur even by these pre-digital days. Scruffy and shambolic (his Carnaby Street suited DS regards him as a tramp in a filthy mac), foul mouthed and even fouler of mind, Jack is no one’s idea of a model detective, least of all the immaculately short haired Mullet, Divisional Commander of Denton nick and a man Jack clashes with as much as the criminals. All in all he’s not exactly living the life of Jack, with both Christmas and his birthday looming and a missing child case landed on his unkempt desk along with a host of other crimes to solve.The strength of this book (the first in the Frost series) is in its humour and characterization. Jack Frost is a man not so much politically incorrect as just wrong. Cynical, sarcastic and slovenly, insubordinate and exasperating, Frost is a character that shouldn’t work but thanks to skillful writing earns our trust and sympathy. Canny, cunning and crafty Jack may be, but he is also imbued with a rough compassion and a dogged perseverance that is more hound dog than hang dog=we also see a man who is deeply scarred, both emotionally and physically by the death of his wife and the aftermath of an abusive marriage. Indeed, there is a strong, and sometimes, disturbing sexual undercurrent running through this book and in fact most of the Frost series that seem very out of place in 2015 and may make some readers uncomfortable. It is hard to imagine any police officer today so casually condoning clerical sexual abuse as Jack does here.Nonetheless, if biting black humour and savage one liners mixed up with a solid police procedural are your thing, then I think you will enjoy Frost at Christmas-there are some laugh out loud moments to be had here. It is far darker than the somewhat cuddly TV version starring David Jason and the ending is particularly contrived and goes very Basil Exposition for a bit before leading us back to a gripping and nightmare cliffhanger of a finish…It’s not exactly a cheery Christmas tale, but if you take a chance on Jumpin Jack Frost you might just find it’s a gas, gas, gas.
I can't decide if Detective Inspector Jack Frost is a misunderstood genius or if he's just incredibly lucky. While he exhibits traits of someone who clearly knows what he's doing; he mostly seems like a bumbling jerk who happens to fall into the right answers.By saying that, I certainly don't mean for it to seem like I was irritated. Look at Dr. House on... House. He berates his patients as well as his colleges and is certainly without tact - but he always gets the job done. Frost shows many of those traits I love in House but adds a more cheery, less-depressing attitude that made this book really fun to read.The mystery was a little less than stellar but Wingfield rarely focused on one thing at a time, keeping things lively and moving along at a swift pace. Frost's dry humor and his relationship with fellow officer, Clive Barnard, held my interest throughout. Barnard was the perfect accompaniment along the way; voluntarily putting up with whatever Frost threw his way. I'm hoping he sticks around in the future books.I'm pleased to admit that I genuinely laughed out loud on more than a few occasions, which was a little unexpected. In reading a few reviews on here, the comedy is something that isn't really given its due.
Do You like book Frost At Christmas (1995)?
Jack Frost, Denton Division, is not belived by his superiors. In fact, he's something of a pain in the brass: unkempt and unruly, with a taste for crude humor and a tnedency to cut corners. They's like nothing better than to bounce him from the department. The only problem is, Frost's the one D.I. who always seems to find a way to get the job done.Ten days to Christmas and Frost is in no mood to celebrate. He is given multiple cases to work on because the division is short handed. Everyone is out looking for a missing child.I enjoyed Frost. He is not exactly your typical hero, but I liked him anyway. On to #2 in the series.
—Pat
First the good, the mystery was engaging and perfectly twisty. The male secondary characters are well drawn and Frost does manage to be amusing at times.But it's all wrapped in a giant turd of misogyny. Every woman who makes an appearance is either fuckable or doesn't matter. Most glaringly is when Frost blames a 12 year old girl for the fact that the vicar has naked photos of her. See, the vicar's not a bad sort the girl is just a slut who drove him to it. Frost then shares a charming story of when he was 19 and was doing a girl he later found out was 11. I've got news for you, if you're 19 and you can't tell that some one is 8 years younger than you, you're either not trying very hard and making excuses or you have some sort of mental deficiency. At first I read on, thinking he was pulling a Stabler move from SVU where he pretend to be into something gross so the suspect will confess. But no. Even at the end the vicar isn't to blame, the 12 year old girl is. That's the most egregious thing but then there are the little things piled on top of it. When some young man hits and kills and old woman with reckless driving Frost feels bad for the driver! The hell with the woman. In fact, I was dumbfounded by the fact that everyone said that Frost fell apart when his wife died. He didn't seem the type of character to care. I would think he'd just move on to someone else, since one hole is as good as another to men like that. So when the big "reveal" comes that his marriage was horrible I was wondering why we were supposed to be surprised, it made more sense to me. Of course the bad marriage was the wife's fault, she was a nagging bitch who wanted more money & success. Jeez, maybe she was a nagging bitch because she had the bad luck to marry a giant arsehole!So I read to the end, waiting for the punchline. Little did I know the joke would be on me. Luckily, I got it from the library. It's too bad, because it was a good mystery but while I like flawed characters I can't spend this much time in the head of someone who hates my gender this much.
—KarenF
What is it about English police stories? They always seem to have "eccentric" policeman - (usually insubordinate, untidy one who don't fit in), quiet old towns with a disproportionately high number of murders, and an absence of the basic human drives as motives: money, sex, power. Frost continues in the same vein, and never departs from it. The enjoyment is in the plot twists, the misdirection and the eventual unravelling of the labyrinthine plot, as well as the personailty "quirks" of the main character. If this is your cup of tea (and there are lots of cups of tea in Frost at Christmas) then I'm sure you will enjoy it, but I hanker for more substantial fare from my crime fiction. There is nothing gritty here (like Hammett or Chandler), and no exploration of weightier themes (like Mankell or Indridason), and that - ultimately - is why Frost, like so many English police novels - leaves me cold.
—Doug Newdick
