WINTER FROST

This British police procedural features Detective Jack Frost, whose dry sarcasm masks a tender heart, and who has chain-smoked through several similar volumes, as well as a TV series. Indeed, this reads like a TV script--narrative stripped to the bone, plenty of action and dialogue--an excellent script at that, with fascinating characters, well-crafted dialogue, suspense-ful plotting. While bobbing and weaving around the politics and personalities of the force, Frost clears up a number of sordid cases--ritual slayings of streetwalkers, a missing 7-year old sexpot, a skeleton uncovered after forty years buried in a backyard. Narrator Stephen Thorne gives all characters their due, especially Frost, whom Thorne endows with rumpled charm. This actor has done his homework, for he subtly foreshadows events and shades lines in a way possible only after the careful preparation that most audiobooks do not receive. Y.R. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 01]