Author:R D Wingfield
‘Exciting, ingenious, roundly satisfying’ – Literary Review
Ten days to Christmas. Tracey Uphill, aged eight, hasn't come home from Sunday school. Her mother, a pretty young prostitute, is desperate.
Enter Detective Inspector Jack Frost, sloppy, scruffy and insubordinate. He's been assigned a new sidekick, the Chief Constable's nephew Detective Constable Clive Barnard. Fresh to provincial Denton in an oversmart suit, Barnard is an easy target for Frost's withering satire.
Assisted and annoyed by Barnard, Frost, complete with a store of tasteless anecdotes to fit every occasion, proceeds with the investigation in typically unorthodox style. After consulting a local witch, Frost finds himself drawn into an unsolved crime from the past.
He's risking not only his career, but also his life...
Affecting, frightening and, especially in Frost's dialogue, extremely amusing
—— ListenerA crisp, confident, ripely-characterized novel; exciting, ingenious, roundly satisfying
—— Literary ReviewHe has a faultless ear for the varied nuances of mid-Victorian English... [and] takes a wicked pleasure in creating a dense underlay of references, a blend of historical fact and other authors' fiction which lies beneath his narrative and occasionally erupts into it... Clever and hugely readable
—— Andrew Taylor , IndependentTaylor's skill ensures the book never loses its grip... Hugely enjoyable...Conan Doyle, Dickens and Wilkie Collins knew how to do it, and Taylor has learned his lesson well... A great read. It intrigues, diverts and delights. It is clever and intricate and huge fun
—— Susan Hill , GuardianTaylor is marking out a territory as distinct and disturbing as Greenland, with the same imperative towards moral inquisition and a flatlands melancholy that is all his own
—— Hilary Mantel , Sunday TimesIntricate and vividly realised
—— Daily TelegraphTaylor is utterly enthralling
—— Bob Monkhouse , GuardianIntricate and vividly realised...a pin-sharp recreation of 19th-century life
—— Robert Douglas-Fairhurst , Daily TelegraphTaylor has a lot of fun with his premise, and readers should too
—— Suzi Feay , Independent on SundayTaylor] creates a vivid, kaleidoscopic world that constantly shifts before the reader's eyes
—— Judith Flanders , Sunday TelegraphRobert Harris's bullet-paced thriller... [It's] impossible to put this book down
—— Literary ReviewAn elegant and highly readable thriller
—— Douglas Hurd , SpectatorHarris's feel for political manoeuvring is buttressed by a strong sense of place and good fast pacing which the craftsman sustains to the final page
—— Times Literary SupplementIntelligent, perceptive and enormous fun
—— GuardianThe most fun I've had with a novel in ages
—— Nicholas Blincoe , Books of the Year, New StatesmanKnee-deep in intrigue and bristling with incident... An edgy journey through the dark corridors of power, a witty portrait of political and literary falsehoods, and a masterclass in gripping storytelling, Harris's dynamic novel is a page-turner of the old school.
—— Sunday Times CultureA contender for top thriller of 2010
—— Sun (Best books of 2010)A turbo-charged page-flipper: you're on page 300 before you take a breath...Child is a master of distances, spaces and the physics of opposing forces
—— The Scotsman