Jack Frost

With a healthy disregard for rules, he attracts trouble like a magnet. He has a newly assigned apprentice - the unfortunate Detective Constable Barnard - the Chief Constable’s nephew. Fresh to the provinces, just up from London in an embarrassingly flash suit, he’s ripe for Frost’s satire.

Detective Inspector Jack Frost, officially on duty, is nevertheless determined to sneak off to a colleague's leaving party. But first the corpse of a well-known local junkie is found blocking the drain of a Denton public lavatory and then, when Frost attempts to join the revels later on, the nubile daughter of a wealthy businessman is reported missing. Sleepy Denton has never known anything like the crime wave which now threatens to submerge it.

A serial killer is terrorizing the senior citizens of Denton, and the local police are succumbing to a flu epidemic. In uncertain charge of the investigations is Detective Inspector Jack Frost, crumpled, slapdash, and foul-mouthed as ever. Trying to cope despite inadequate backup, but there is never enough time; the unsolved crimes pile up and the vicious killings go on.

Detective InspectorJjack Frost knelt down beside the tiny body. Who did this to you, sonny? he asked, his face tight with compassion. The boy was eight years old, bound and gagged, and stripped naked. He had been dead for some seven or eight hours. Frost should have been on holiday, he had sneaked back into the station late at night to help himself to some of Divisional Commander Mullett's cigarettes and this case had been dumped on him as no other officers were available. And then another boy is reported missing.

The discovery of two teenage girls' bodies and a video of a snuff movie showing the death of one of the victims leaves Detective Inspector Jack Frost in a race against time before the killer can strike again.

May, 1982. Britain celebrates the sinking of the Belgrano, Jimmy Savile has the run of the airwaves and Denton Police Division welcomes its first black policeman, DC Waters -- recently relocated from Bethnal Green. While the force is busy dealing with a spate of local burglaries, the body of fifteen-year-old Samantha Evans is discovered in woodland next to the nearby railway track. Then a fifteen-year-old boy is found dead on Denton's golf course, his organs removed.

November 5th, 1982. It's been one of the worst days of Detective Sergeant Jack Frost's life. He has buried his wife Mary, and must now endure the wake, attended by all of Denton's finest. All, that is, apart from DC Sue Clark, who spends the night chasing a bogus tip-off, before being summoned to the discovery of a human foot. And the night gets worse. Local entrepreneur Harry Baskin is shot inside his club, an off-licence is set on fire and a famous painting goes missing. And Superintendant Mullett's attempts to join the Freemasons are being rudely thwarted.

August, 1983. Denton is preparing for a wedding. DS Waters should be on top of the world with less than a week to go until he marries Kim Myles. But the Sunday before the big day, the body of a young woman is found in the churchyard, and their wedding venue becomes a crime scene. DS Jack Frost has been homeless for the past three months. He's been staying with DC Sue Clarke but with a baby to take care of and the imminent arrival of her mother, she's given him his marching orders.