R. D. Wingfield had already established a successful career in radio drama when he created the character of Inspector Jack Frost in 1972. The dishevelled, disobedient officer was nothing like the traditional crime thriller hero, and did not bring Wingfield critical or commercial success until the end of the 1980s. Although in the next decade David Jason’s portrayal on ITV made Frost famous, Wingfield was never comfortable with the television interpretation of his creation.

Rodney David Wingfield was born in Hackney, East London, and attended the Coopers Company School, which was evacuated to Frome in Somerset during the Second World War. Poor vision exempted him from National Service and after junior office jobs in the East End he settled into work as a clerk in the sales offices of the Fina oil company, while devoting his spare time to writing radio plays.

His first sale, to BBC Radio Drama, was Compensating Error in 1968 and two more plays were swiftly commissioned. After three successful broadcasts, Wingfield gave up the office job and for almost 20 years was to provide BBC radio with a steady stream of 45 or 60-minute dramas noted for clever plot twists and surprise endings. He also tried pure comedy, writing the series The Secret Life of Kenneth Williams.

His obvious skill at dialogue and the ability to construct complex plots with surprise endings aroused the interest of Macmillan, a publisher with a growing crime fiction list. Wingfield was approached and offered a £50 advance for a crime novel. Over the summer of 1972 he wrote Frost at Christmas — which Macmillan then promptly rejected. It was not until 1984 that the book finally found a publisher, in Canada, only appearing in the UK in 1989.

Wingfield returned to writing plays but never gave up on the scruffy, chain-smoking, caustic character he had created. Inspector Jack Frost featured in his 1977 radio play Three Days of Frost. Ronnie Barker was unable to take the lead and the veteran character actor Leslie Sands stepped into the role. The play was well received, but the BBC did not commission any further episodes. Wingfield tried again, with A Touch of Frostin 1982 as a Saturday Night Theatre production, this time with Derek Martin as Frost.

As reviews of that initially rejected first novel began to filter over from Canada – “Frost is bright, insolent, sardonic, sloppy and fearless,” said the Toronto Globe — Frost at Christmas was finally published in England by Constable in 1989, followed quickly by the novel of A Touch of Frost in 1990.

Wingfield’s multi-strand plots and his depiction of harassed policemen struggling against paperwork and internal politics quickly found admirers among British critics: “Frost himself is splendidly drawn: rude, crude and insubordinate,” was The Times’s verdict.

His use of black humour brought him fans among younger British crime writers who railed against the more traditional, “cosy” English village murder mysteries. The Fresh Blood group of writers even asked Wingfield to join in an anthology of “new” crime writing, to which Wingfield replied: “Are you sure you have the right person?”

His last radio play, Hate Mail, was broadcast in 1988, as the novels began to dominate. Three more followed, Night Frost, Hard Frost and Winter Frost, at irregular intervals up to 1999. Wingfield described himself as “a reluctant author”, saying he was often “thoroughly disenchanted with the grind of writing full-length novels”. He preferred short radio drama, though he realised that the market was shrinking.

By this time, however, Inspector Frost was well on the way to becoming a household name thanks to the 1992 launch of the television series A Touch of Froststarring David Jason, who had chosen the character as a vehicle for his move into television drama, after reading the novel on holiday.

Although it ensured that his fictional detective would become as famous as his contemporary, Inspector Morse, Wingfield was less than enthusiastic about the television adaptation of his work. He always insisted: “I have nothing against David Jason as Frost at all, he just isn’t my Frost.” He claimed never to watch the series in case it altered his perception of his Frost character and he refused to appear on Super Sleuths, an ITV appreciation of television detectives last year.

A very private man, he avoided book launches and publishing parties, declined all invitations to crime writing conventions and literary festivals and was rarely photographed.

In his final months, he completed his sixth novel, A Killing Frost, which is to be published in April 2008.

He is survived by a son.

R. D. Wingfield, author and dramatist, was born on June 6, 1928. He died of cancer on July 31, 2007, aged 79