DS George Cross #4
I love a good police procedural, especially ones with an interesting main character like Tim Sullivan’s DS George Cross. Not so comfortable with humans he’s at home with facts, figures and making connections, because, like Detective Monk, he’s neurodivergent in a way that makes him both good at his job and extremely annoying to those around him. This series is huge in the UK and the US publisher is slowly releasing them stateside. This is installment four in the series, and although it’s the first I’ve read, it stands comfortably on its own, with the characters and relationships clear.
Cross is an irritant to most everyone in the department, but functions well with his partner, Ottley, a working mother. The case in this book involves the death of a local politician, a former mayor of Bristol, who became an online influencer as an agony aunt (advice columnist). She’s found dead in her home, apparently the victim of a robbery, but many details of this scenario don’t sit well with Cross, and a major crime team is set up around the high profile killing, with Cross and Ottley as lead detectives. Their boss tells them to follow their investigation no matter where it takes them, an unusual amount of leeway.
Cross’s personality is illuminated by the author in several ways, notably by the patient and thorough way he looks at evidence and questions suspects. He makes a fan boy of the crime scene investigator, who invents reasons to be around George and to tag along on some of his questioning of suspects. His gifts even extend to his own personal life – his mother abandoned him and his father when he was young, and the two of them remain close, but when she shows up out of the blue, his sleuthing instincts kick in, helping him to solve a family puzzle that concludes at the same time as the crime investigation.
The book is nicely structured, and the author, a screenwriter, has a deft hand stitching together dramatic scenes, as well as for dialogue and character development. The crime investigation is a complex one and leads to many unexpected places but George ultimately manages to tie the threads together. There’s even an excellent red herring plot line which provides some dark humor.
I loved the character of George. I’m sure he would be incredibly irritating to work with (and Ottley is often righteously annoyed by him) but he’s so smart and ultimately, like the best detectives, intuitive, that he ultimately proves hard to resist. Ottley patiently attempts to teach him some social skills, and he manages to pick up precisely one in the course of the novel. I also admired the well-organized storyline, with my only real objection to this book, which could have benefitted by the cutting of 50 or 100 pages, being its length. I enjoyed the read, even though, after a few hundred pages, I did cast my mind back fondly on those skinny paperbacks with no excess by authors like Dorothy Simpson, Jo Bannister and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. — Robin Agnew