Review: The Dentist: A DS George Cross Mystery by Tim Sullivan

  

As next Tuesday already has a publication day review scheduled, I am posting my review today. If you preorder now or pick it up later, make sure you get the new publication as the previous published one with a totally different cover that includes the word “thriller” is widely available.

 

Detective Sergeant George Cross is a man who is very much set in his ways. For very good reason. He is on the autism spectrum with Asperger’s syndrome. He has a very hard time picking up on social cues and interacting with people. He does not recognize emotions and has to go through a sort of mental catalog to figure out the emotion a person is displaying on their face. He comes off as cold and dispassionate as he zero sense of humor and takes nearly everything literally. He gets hyper focused on the minutia of a case. In so doing, he looks for patterns and anomalies. If you need somebody to find the needle in the haystack, he would be your man. He is an exceptional investigator though he drives everyone around him a bit mad at times.

 

As The Dentist: A DS George Cross Mystery by Tim Sullivan begins, he is at the outdoor location of a deceased elderly male. The man was clearly homeless in recent months and, quite possibly, years. The Uniformed Officers that responded to the scene have already deduced that this is just another random “homeless on homeless” crime and have lost all interest. DS George Cross is very sure they are wrong as the man still has his bag containing some food and alcohol. The alcohol is worth more than its weight in gold on the streets and one would think a homeless killer would have taken that.

 

No, something else is afoot. For DS George Cross the deceased also represents a fellow outsider like himself. He knows he does not fit in and has to work to maintain any sort of human contact with the team and others. He also is acutely aware of how he is and how he has been this way back to childhood. He also is very aware that he can’t change any aspect of who he is as that is the very fiber of his being. Truth be told, he doesn’t care. He just does what he does. Because of that, he is an exceptionally good investigator in the Major Crime Unit of the Avon and Somerset police.

 

Because he is what he is, he is obsessed with rules and procedure. Everything is triple checked, if not more, and fully documented. He builds meticulous cases that prosecutors relish as they know that no corners were cut and everything is perfect going into trial. He may have little to no sense of humor and takes everything literally, but he also has a conviction rate of 97 percent.

 

DS Cross is absolutely certain that it is a murder. He is also sure that it is not a case of street violence among the homeless. A man that, as Cross spots in the mortuary, was married and a widower. Not only that, but Cross also spots that the murder victim still has his contacts in his eyes. After the pathologist that missed them uses tweezers and gets them out, Cross notes that they are a little bit larger than normal size. A specialized set of lenses that are used to treat a very specific and rare eye condition. That information could be used to track down his identity. Another example, in his mind, that if other folks would just do their jobs properly, he would not waste so much time having to go back over their work.   

 

That attention to detail and knowledge beyond the job soon leads the police to his identity. They also soon have an obvious suspect, another homeless person, who clearly had a physical fight of some kind with the victim in the last few hours before the murder. The suspect was too drunk and has no memory of what happened. But, charging him, based on the evidence, would be easy and it would resolve the case successfully as the suspect probably did it in the mind of his boss and others.

 

When ordered to charge the suspect, Cross refuses, and the task falls to his partner, DS Josie Ottey. Cross also chooses to continue to investigate as he believes the suspect in their cells absolutely did not do it. He believes somebody else violently murdered the man as he was strangled so hard his trachea was broken.

 

With the victim identified, it doesn’t take Cross long to consider the fact that the death in the here and now might have something to do with the murder of the man’s wife fifteen years ago. A murder that was a media sensation. Dubbed the “Tea Set Murder,” it saw a man who confessed, later recanted, and was ultimately convicted, sent to prison.

 

It also was a case, apparently as Cross begins to review it, one that had issues. Was it just cutting corners and sloppy police work, or was there an actual police coverup? Was the actual killer then never identified and thus remained free? Is it that killer again in the here and now or what? Over the objections of his boss and others, Cross continues to work to link the two cases, and drags Ottey and Mackenzie along with him.  

 

Originally published by Pacific Press in Great Britain in 2020, this police procedural now published in the United States by Grove Atlantic is very good. For those of us who have family members on the spectrum and/or worked for a number of years with students on the spectrum in the local public school system, the first few chapters of constant explanation of how DS Cross is and why can be a bit tiresome. However, if one gets through those several early chapters and stays with it, the patience is rewarded with a very good read as the case develops.

 

The Dentist: A DS George Cross Mystery is a very good read. Built around a main character that is pretty much brilliant and eccentric, the author has assembled an interesting cast of secondary characters. Whether that be the boss, DCI Carson, who is not an idiot though he is a political animal and looking to move up, DS Josie Ottey, who tries to get him to be better with others and is often exasperated by that and other things, the new Police Staff Investigator, Alice Mackenzie, a trainee who soon learns to do only what she is explicitly told to do, and others. Each character, regardless of their importance in the read, is quite distinctive as the read becomes more and more complex and pulls the reader deep into an intriguing fictional world.

 

Strongly recommended and very much worth your time.

 

Once again, I am indebted to Lesa Holstine who reviewed this book very positively back in July. She noted that the book was listed on NetGalley. So, I went and picked it up. I also requested and was quickly granted permission to read, The Cyclist, which is the second book in the series and will be released by Grove Atlantic in January. Hopefully, they plan on doing the entire series.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3VnwxCq

 

 

I received a digital ARC from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, through NetGalley, with no expectation of a positive review.  

 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2025