R. D. Wingfield - Crime Fiction's undervalued genius

To most the name R. D . Wingfield will sum up images of Inspector Frost, his best known creation who was brought to screen by David Jason but that's only half the picture. In fact it's not even half the picture, a quarter maybe or even less because R. D. Wingfield was for around twenty years a prolific writer of radio drama for the BBC- in fact even Inspector Frost made his debut in a radio play.


The Inspector Frost novels are truly excellent but it is with the radio plays - most of which can be found easily on You Tube - that the author did his best work.  Between 1972 and 1988, Wingfield produced a steady stream of intelligent mystery plays with a built-in guarantee of enjoyment for the listener . In fact even when Wingfield fell out with the BBC he continued to sell them plays written under pen names including the name Arthur Jefferson, which was actually Stan Laurel's real name.


'I was radio's blue-eyed boy. Everything I wrote they bought. When I'd sold three plays I thought, I'm on to a winner here, and I slung up my job - I was a clerk in an oil company -and started writing radio plays full-time.' R. D. Wingfield.


In various interviews Wingfield stated that he considered himself a dramatist first, and a novelist second and even when the TV series based around Inspector Frost made him an household name, radio remained his first love.

';I don't watch the television Frost. Nothing against David Jason. I could watch him again and again in 'Only Fools and Horses', but he isn't my Frost, and my fear is that if I were to watch him, then my next Frost would become him.' R. D Wingfield talking to the Radio Times in 1996.

Leslie Sands: First Frost

Back when Frost was first being developed for Radio, Wingfield hoped Ronnie Barker would play the part but recording couldn't be worked in around his TV work and so Leslie Sands was cast - this Frost is actually closer to the character in the novels than the TV series and can be listened to HERE.

Wingfield was an intensely shy and private man, Wingfield lived anonymously at Basildon, Essex, where even his neighbours were unaware of who he was. When ITV bought the television rights to the Frost books in 1992, he continued to live modestly and eschewed the trappings of success; he avoided the hoopla of book launches and publishers' parties, turned down requests for television interviews and was rarely photographed. Nor did he enjoy writing the books, regarding them as a grinding chore and very much a bread-and-butter obligation; radio scripts, on the other hand, were a labour of love, and Wingfield produced a steady stream of some 40 mysteries over a 20-year period until a shrinking radio market and the success of the Frost novels in the early 1990s forced his hand.

These radio plays are all good, many of them are excellent. Check out A TEST TO DESTRUCTION, an early play in which an explosives expert, seemingly caught in a desperate trap, keeps his nerve and thinks ahead. THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY, from 1972, which cleverly resolves an unexplained murder ten years after its commission. Also the serial OUTBREAK OF FEAR (1982), which piles one horrific death onto another in a hair-raising play. And SATURDAY ROSTER from 1974 is the ultimate straight forward police procedural And one I only recently listened to was THE KILLING SEASON, a six part thriller from 1984, which is set during the Christmas period is an absolute classic of crime drama. These are just a few of the excellent Wingfield plays that can be found on You Tube.

The original Frost novels

Below is a list of the Wingfield radio plays together with dates of first broadcast. Source Nigel Deacon's Diversity Website.

As previously stated most of these plays can be found on You Tube - To give you an idea of how highly I regard these plays I'll just tell you that I've ripped them all as MP3 FILES and they have a permanent place on my iPod - they've entertained me on many a long drive.

Compensating Error (45') Aug 68 8.15 R4
Our West Ladyton Branch (60') 13-11-68 8.15 R2
Better never than late (60') Nov 69 2.00 R4
The night they deliver the money (60') 4-4-70 2.00 R4
Double Entry (45') 7-10-70 R4
Test to Destruction (45') 1970 R4
Slow fuse (45') 13-1-71 8.15 R4
Letter of the law (60') 28-4-71 3.05 R4
Cat and mouse game (45') May 71 8.15 R4
Adequate Reasons (45') 21-7-71 8.15 R4
The tenth anniversary (45') 9-2-72 8.15 R4
The Alternative Plan (45') 19-7-72 8.15 R4
A second class risk (45') Jan 73 8.15 R4
Sins of commission (45') 2-5-73 8.15 R4
Cleft stick (45') 19-12-73 8.15 R4
Balance brought forward (45') 27-2-74 8.15 R4
Murder locked out (45') 11-9-74 8.15 R4
Saturday Roster (45') 9-10-74 8.15 R4
Slow Fuse (30' version) May 76 R4
Smiling and beautiful death (45') May 76 3.05 R4
Death of the insured (45') 8-7-76 3.05 R4
Winner takes the Kitty (30') Oct 76 R4
Three days of Frost (90') 12-2-77 8.30 R4
Credit risk (45') 24-2-77 3.05 R4
Daylight robbery (45') 2-6-77 3.05 R4
The last escape (45') 7-7-77 3.05 R4
Blood money (60') 26-8-77 3.05 R4
Post Mortem Shock (45') 2-11-77 R4
Nightmare (15') 16-2-79 1145pm R4
The cellar (15') 7-4-79 1145pm R4
Second sight (60') May 81 3.02 R4
Innocent victim (60') 20-8-81 3.02 R4
A touch of Frost (90') 6-2-82 8.30 R4
Moveable assets (45') Apr 82 3.02 R4
Outbreak of Fear (5 x 30 mins) beginning 29-8-82 R4
The Killing Season (as Arthur Jefferson) (6 x 30 mins) Jan 84 R4
Cover-up (90') 5-1-85 8.30 R4
Hate Mail (as T. Smith) (45') c1985 R4
Deadfall (60') Dec 87 R4. Rebroadcast by ABC, c1995

Rodney David Wingfield, radio scriptwriter and crime novelist, June 6 1928; died July 31 2007

Discovering the Detectives: R. D. Wingfield

To most the name R. D . Wingfield will sum up images of Inspector Frost, his best known creation who was brought to screen by David Jason but that's only half the picture. In fact it's not even half the picture, a quarter maybe or even less because R. D. Wingfield was for around twenty years a prolific writer of radio drama for the BBC- in fact even Inspector Frost made his debut in a radio play.


The Inspector Frost novels are truly excellent but it is with the radio plays - most of which can be found easily on You Tube - that the author did his best work.  Between 1972 and 1988, Wingfield produced a steady stream of intelligent mystery plays with a built-in guarantee of enjoyment for the listener . In fact even when Wingfield fell out with the BBC he continued to sell them plays written under pen names including the name Arthur Jefferson, which was actually Stan Laurel's real name.


'I was radio's blue-eyed boy. Everything I wrote they bought. When I'd sold three plays I thought, I'm on to a winner here, and I slung up my job - I was a clerk in an oil company -and started writing radio plays full-time.' R. D. Wingfield.


In various interviews Wingfield stated that he considered himself a dramatist first, and a novelist second and even when the TV series based around Inspector Frost made him an household name, radio remained his first love.

';I don't watch the television Frost. Nothing against David Jason. I could watch him again and again in 'Only Fools and Horses', but he isn't my Frost, and my fear is that if I were to watch him, then my next Frost would become him.' R. D Wingfield talking to the Radio Times in 1996.

Leslie Sands: First Frost

Back when Frost was first being developed for Radio, Wingfield hoped Ronnie Barker would play the part but recording couldn't be worked in around his TV work and so Leslie Sands was cast - this Frost is actually closer to the character in the novels than the TV series and can be listened to HERE.

Wingfield was an intensely shy and private man, Wingfield lived anonymously at Basildon, Essex, where even his neighbours were unaware of who he was. When ITV bought the television rights to the Frost books in 1992, he continued to live modestly and eschewed the trappings of success; he avoided the hoopla of book launches and publishers' parties, turned down requests for television interviews and was rarely photographed. Nor did he enjoy writing the books, regarding them as a grinding chore and very much a bread-and-butter obligation; radio scripts, on the other hand, were a labour of love, and Wingfield produced a steady stream of some 40 mysteries over a 20-year period until a shrinking radio market and the success of the Frost novels in the early 1990s forced his hand.

These radio plays are all good, many of them are excellent. Check out A TEST TO DESTRUCTION, an early play in which an explosives expert, seemingly caught in a desperate trap, keeps his nerve and thinks ahead. THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY, from 1972, which cleverly resolves an unexplained murder ten years after its commission. Also the serial OUTBREAK OF FEAR (1982), which piles one horrific death onto another in a hair-raising play. And SATURDAY ROSTER from 1974 is the ultimate straight forward police procedural And one I only recently listened to was THE KILLING SEASON, a six part thriller from 1984, which is set during the Christmas period is an absolute classic of crime drama. These are just a few of the excellent Wingfield plays that can be found on You Tube.

The original Frost novels

Below is a list of the Wingfield radio plays together with dates of first broadcast. Source Nigel Deacon's Diversity Website.

As previously stated most of these plays can be found on You Tube - To give you an idea of how highly I regard these plays I'll just tell you that I've ripped them all as MP3 FILES and they have a permanent place on my iPod - they've entertained me on many a long drive.

Compensating Error (45') Aug 68 8.15 R4
Our West Ladyton Branch (60') 13-11-68 8.15 R2
Better never than late (60') Nov 69 2.00 R4
The night they deliver the money (60') 4-4-70 2.00 R4
Double Entry (45') 7-10-70 R4
Test to Destruction (45') 1970 R4
Slow fuse (45') 13-1-71 8.15 R4
Letter of the law (60') 28-4-71 3.05 R4
Cat and mouse game (45') May 71 8.15 R4
Adequate Reasons (45') 21-7-71 8.15 R4
The tenth anniversary (45') 9-2-72 8.15 R4
The Alternative Plan (45') 19-7-72 8.15 R4
A second class risk (45') Jan 73 8.15 R4
Sins of commission (45') 2-5-73 8.15 R4
Cleft stick (45') 19-12-73 8.15 R4
Balance brought forward (45') 27-2-74 8.15 R4
Murder locked out (45') 11-9-74 8.15 R4
Saturday Roster (45') 9-10-74 8.15 R4
Slow Fuse (30' version) May 76 R4
Smiling and beautiful death (45') May 76 3.05 R4
Death of the insured (45') 8-7-76 3.05 R4
Winner takes the Kitty (30') Oct 76 R4
Three days of Frost (90') 12-2-77 8.30 R4
Credit risk (45') 24-2-77 3.05 R4
Daylight robbery (45') 2-6-77 3.05 R4
The last escape (45') 7-7-77 3.05 R4
Blood money (60') 26-8-77 3.05 R4
Post Mortem Shock (45') 2-11-77 R4
Nightmare (15') 16-2-79 1145pm R4
The cellar (15') 7-4-79 1145pm R4
Second sight (60') May 81 3.02 R4
Innocent victim (60') 20-8-81 3.02 R4
A touch of Frost (90') 6-2-82 8.30 R4
Moveable assets (45') Apr 82 3.02 R4
Outbreak of Fear (5 x 30 mins) beginning 29-8-82 R4
The Killing Season (as Arthur Jefferson) (6 x 30 mins) Jan 84 R4
Cover-up (90') 5-1-85 8.30 R4
Hate Mail (as T. Smith) (45') c1985 R4
Deadfall (60') Dec 87 R4. Rebroadcast by ABC, c1995

Rodney David Wingfield, radio scriptwriter and crime novelist, June 6 1928; died July 31 2007

First Frost by Henry James

R D Wingfield's curmudgeonly detective Jack Frost returns in the book which sets out to continue the late author's work by going back to the character's origins - First Frost is actually written by two authors, Henry Sutton and James Gurbett who go by the collective pen name of Henry James - I'd read and enjoyed the other three books they've written around the character of Jack Frost as created by the late R. D. Wingfield but until now this first book in the prequel series had escaped me.

Of course the TV version of Frost is so well known that it is impossible to read this book without conjuring up a vision of David Jason as our hero. It's the same with the Morse books - I defy anyone to read an Inspector Morse story and not have a mental picture of John Thaw. Mind you the Frost in this book is much younger than the original version, these books being prequels, so maybe it's a mental image of Dell Trotter that sticks in the mind. This may, in fact be fitting, since Frost's superior Mr Mullet is a right plonker!

R. D. Wingfield's Frost thrillers are much loved and the authors here have managed to capture the feel of the books as well as the popular TV series which still plays in repeats today. Of course the original author said of David Jason's portrayal of Frost in the TV series that the character was not his Frost, but the authors here have wisely in my opinion set their version somewhere between the character from the original books and the TV series. Now the character of Jack Frost was a troublesome creation and radio dramatist R D Wingfield struggled to get his first Frost novel into print.  Frost at Christmas failed to find a publisher for many years. It was written in the mid 1970's but  was eventually published in Canada in 1980,not appearing in Britain until 1989. Five more novels followed: A Touch of Frost (produced as a radio play in 1987 and published as a novel in 1990), Night Frost (1992), Hard Frost (1995), Winter Frost (1999) and A Killing Frost (published posthumously in 2008).

The rest is, as they say, history and these days Jack Frost is truly an iconic creation - the plot of this novel is typically chaotic and sees our hero tackling a missing child, spousal and child abuse, a rabies scare and an IRA threat.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and once started found it difficult to put down; finding myself turning the pages until well into the early hours.

A Touch of Frost R. D. Wingfield

A Touch of Frost is actually the second book in the Frost series as written by R. D. Wingfield and is another excellent read. In structure it follows the pattern set out by the first book,  Frost at Christmas and once again we follow Frost as he stumbles from baffling case to baffling case before everything comes together in the end. The character of the books is far removed from the version served up in the TV series, but even so I found the image of Del Boy popping up in my mind every-time Frost was on the page - this was not a problem as I love David Jason's portrayal of the character but the version found in the books is so far removed from the sanitized small screen version that he might as well be a different character. Imagine how the TV Frost might have been had Mary Whitehouse never existed and you pretty much have the character found in the original books. On the small screen Frost is a scruffy maverick cop who bends the rules slightly, but on the page he is scruffy, undisciplined, chauvinistic and often buffoonish. He has his good points though and identifies more with ordinary people than his ambitious colleagues in the force, which is something that sets him apart and just may be the reason why he is such a good copper.

He's also a chain-smoker with some truly disgusting habits. At one stage in the book Frost is dismayed to find he has run out of teabags for his morning brew, and so he gets a used one from the kitchen bin and uses that - yuck! He also risks getting a pretty young police officer killed in an unofficial operation to catch a serial rapist and is never more than one step away from being drummed out of the force.

The Blurb - Sleepy Denton is sleepy no more; a dead junky, a missing girl, a robbery at the strip joint, an MP accused of a hit and run offence and a multiple rapist at large are all sent to try David Jason’s already overworked DI Jack Frost.

A rapist on the loose, a young girl missing, a robbery at a leisure complex run by a low life, and an old man knocked down by a driver who wouldn’t stop … Detective Inspector Jack Frost knew that there would be lots more to come.

It's another frantically paced novel with the secondary characters fully drawn and a real sense of suspense, but there is much more humor in the book than there was in the debut novel. There are times when the way Frost deals with his superior will have the reader laughing out loud, but there's a real humanity about the character of D. I. Frost and that jumps out from the page. He us essentially a loner, a man who can't even properly grieve over his wife's untimely death from cancer.

Another highly recommended crime thriller.

There's a Frost about again...

The author of a popular series dies and the series dies with him - not necessarily so, just ask James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and even good old Count Dracula. Those three are still alive and kicking - OK maybe with the latter character it's undead and kicking - and their creators are long gone.

Yep bringing back characters after the original author cashes in his/her chips is nothing new.

This last month saw the hardcover publication of Fatal Frost by James Henry, actually , a pseudonym for James Gurbut.

Now the character of Jack Frost was a troublesome creation and radio dramatist R D Wingfield struggled to get his first Frost novel into print.  Frost at Christmas failed to find a publisher for many years. It was written in the mid 1970's but  was eventually published in Canada in 1980,not appearing in Britain until 1989. Five more novels followed: A Touch of Frost (produced as a radio play in 1987 and published as a novel in 1990), Night Frost (1992), Hard Frost (1995), Winter Frost (1999) and A Killing Frost (published posthumously in 2008).

 David Jason was an early fan of the novels, being introduced to the character by his friend Ronnie Barker who had once intended to play Frost for radio, and was largely responsible for bringing Frost to television in 1992, as a vehicle for his move towards more serious and dramatic roles in his illustrious acting career.

Frost was a huge success on TV but in order to meet the demands of prime time the character was considerably softened from the excellent source novels - that's not to say the TV series wasn't good, it was but it was different.

 And that's the thing with these continuation novels - they are not the Frost of the books but the Frost of the TV series. True they are prequels and Frost is still a detective sergeant here but they feel and read like the TV series - not that this is a bad thing, but if you want to sample the real Frost you need to read the original novels. However I must add that I've yet to read Fatal Frost - I only picked up my copy this morning - and my opinions are drawn from the previous novel, First Frost which, although I thought it was excellent, I did feel it was more David Jason than Jack Frost. Still I'm looking forward to reading Fatal Frost.


May, 1982. Britain celebrates the sinking of the Belgrano, Jimmy Savile (not yet exposed as a perv with a penchant for young girls)  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. Detective Sergeant Jack Frost is sent to investigate -- a welcome distraction from troubles at home. And when the murdered boy's sister goes missing, Frost and Waters must work together to find her... before it's too late.


Crime fans will welcome the return of Jack Frost and just so you all know - I picked up me gleaming new hardcover in ASDA this morning for £7, which is even cheaper than Amazon.is offering the hardcover. In fact it's a good half a quid cheaper than the Kindle download.