{"id":6923,"date":"2026-02-23T09:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T17:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6923"},"modified":"2026-02-23T09:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T17:14:08","slug":"tim-sullivan-the-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/tim-sullivan-the-politician\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Sullivan: The Politician"},"content":{"rendered":"

DS George Cross #4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I love a good police procedural, especially ones with an interesting main character like Tim Sullivan\u2019s\u00a0 DS George Cross.\u00a0 Not so comfortable with humans he\u2019s at home with facts, figures and making connections, because, like Detective Monk, he\u2019s 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.\u00a0 This is installment four in the series, and although it\u2019s the first I\u2019ve read, it stands comfortably on its own, with the characters and relationships clear.<\/p>\n

Cross is an irritant to most everyone in the department, but functions well with his partner, Ottley, a working mother.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 She\u2019s found dead in her home, apparently the victim of a robbery, but many details of this scenario don\u2019t sit well with Cross, and a major crime team is set up around the high profile killing, with Cross and Ottley as lead detectives.\u00a0 Their boss tells them to follow their investigation no matter where it takes them, an unusual amount of leeway.<\/p>\n

Cross\u2019s personality is illuminated by the author in several ways, notably by the patient and thorough way he looks at evidence and questions suspects.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 His gifts even extend to his own personal life \u2013\u00a0 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\u00a0 instincts kick in, helping him to solve a family puzzle that concludes at the same time as the crime investigation.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The crime investigation is a complex one and leads to many unexpected places but George ultimately manages to tie the threads together. There\u2019s even an excellent red herring plot line which provides some dark humor.<\/p>\n

I loved the character of George.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure he would be incredibly irritating to work with (and Ottley is often righteously annoyed by him) but he\u2019s so smart and ultimately, like the best detectives, intuitive, that he ultimately proves hard to resist.\u00a0 Ottley patiently attempts to teach him some social skills, and he manages to pick up precisely one in the course of the novel.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DS George Cross #4 I love a good police procedural, especially ones with an interesting main character like Tim Sullivan\u2019s\u00a0 DS George Cross.\u00a0 Not so comfortable with humans he\u2019s at home with facts, figures and making connections, because, like Detective Monk, he\u2019s neurodivergent in a way that makes him both good at his job and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2416,2420,2419,8,1276,2418,2417],"class_list":["post-6923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-atlantic-crime","tag-ds-george-cross","tag-neurodivergent-detective","tag-police","tag-robin-agnew","tag-the-politician","tag-tim-sullivan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6925,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions\/6925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}