R. D. Wingfield. Hard Frost (1995) Frost has to tackle several cases at once (what else is new), and keep Mullet and an envious ambitious colleague at bay. He succeeds despite himself, as usual. The cases seem related, which tangles the investigation into an almost untyable knot. A couple of cases are solved inadvertently, and only because Mullet shoves off all the picayune stuff onto Frost. These picayune cases also provide the key to the child murder that propels and unifies the story. The TV Frost is a nicer, more likeable man than the one in the book, with a more interesting love life. Still, these books do the job they are intended for: they provide a way to while away the hours of international air travel (what a misnomer for being stuck in an aluminum alloy tube with a couple hundred fellow sufferers for half a day or so). **½ (2004)
Update 2021 April 19: I reread this book yesterday, a page turner, but not Wingfield's best. Structured like a TV script, with scenes moving the plots forward at more or less the same pace. Frost is a much rougher character than in the TV series. The other characters are 1.5 dimensional, with Mullet and Cassidy nasty careerists and little else. As with many second-rate fictions, dramatisation improves the story: script writers and actors can add the visual clues that the fiction writer has to include as asides and descriptive detail. In a complex multi-plot tale such as this, those touches could bloat the book beyond enduring. I now rate the book a mere **.
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