Hard Frost

A young boy is found dead in a rubbish sack, suffocated and with one finger cut off. Another boy of the same age, Bobby Kirby, is missing. A psychopath is stabbing babies as they lie sleeping in their cots. Enter Detective Inspector Jack Frost, scruffy and insubordinate, foul-mouthed, intuitive and fearless.

The next problem for the understaffed Denton force is the abduction of Carol Stanfield, a fifteen-year-old who’s found naked by the roadside, her father having paid a ransom. Robert Stanfield is a dicey customer, and Frost has his doubts…

The corpse of a petty criminal, Lemmy Hoxton, is discovered, with the tops of three fingers chopped off. The small children of a carpet-fitter are 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.

Jack Frost, brought to magnificent life by David Jason in the TV series, staggers from crisis to crisis, his bumbling modus operandi disguising his extraordinary powers of detection.