Atlantic Crime
Published March 3, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
DS George Cross is one of those detectives who is both brilliant and hard for his colleagues to tolerate. The Poltician is one of a series of seven mysteries that started publication in the UK in 2020 and is now being reissued in the US, each named for the profession of the victim. In this series entry, Cross investigates the death of the former mayor of Bristol who, in retirement, has become a popular social media influencer. She’s been found in her home, a victim of blunt force trauma. Cross and DS Ottey, his patient partner, set out to discover what happened and who was responsible.
Cross is one of a growing number of neurodivergent detectives who are good at solving puzzles and bad at interpreting normal human behavior. He doesn’t look like a detective, dressed in dowdy V-neck sweaters and wearing nerdy bicycle clips. While his colleagues find him both intimidating and sometimes irritating, DS Ottey has learned to handle his social blind spots and has helped him if not overcome them, at least be able to anticipate why people react the way they do to his blunt, socially clueless observations. It is his fixed attention to details and obsessive persistence that makes him a skilled crime solver.
The murder of the former mayor is the focus of the story, as Cross and Ottey work their way through the possible suspects, including the victim’s philandering husband, her son who has a serious gambling problem, staff at an architectural firm that planned a major development that she successfully stymied, or an angry recipient of the pithy life advice she provided to her millions of internet followers. But there’s another mystery to solve. Cross’s mother, who abandoned the family when he was a small child, has reappeared. Though he has always assumed she left because of his autism diagnosis and difficult behavior, she denies it and urges him to use his skills as a detective to figure out what led to her departure. Woven through the larger story, this personal mystery is ultimately solved.
The author is a successful screen writer and director and it shows in his fiction, which is brisk, engaging and, if not indulging in stereotypes, peopled with familiar types: Cross is obtuse about anything involving emotions and often rudely demanding, but brilliant; there’s the loyal partner who is something of a translator for him when he can’t communicate effectively, and there’s the incompetent detective who is a comically clueless media hog. As the series is being released in the US by Atlantic Crime, with a title appearing every month or two, it can be binged like many a popular television series. In the final analysis, it’s a fun series that offers traditional puzzles and a familiar cast of detectives without being either too twee or too realistically grim.