The Dentist
For DS George Cross, every weekday starts with the same breakfast at the same diner. Then he rides his bike to work and methodically follows the same procedure for locking it up. From a standing Thursday night take-out dinner with his dad to an incessant need to lay out files in such a way that they are equidistant to each edge of his desk, routine rules his life.
As if his colleagues at the Major Crimes Unit didn’t find these behavioral ticks unusual enough, his Asperger syndrome also keeps him from empathizing with others or picking up on social cues that seem to come naturally to everyone else. In sum, everyone at the MCU, including Cross’s partner Josie Ottey, find him nearly impossible to work with, but there’s one thing they just can’t argue with — he has the best case-closing rate in the department.
In The Dentist (Pacific Press), author Tim Sullivan throws his characters and his audience into the midst of not one, but two criminal mysteries. The real strength of this novel is its ability to stay true to the tropes of the thriller genre while still exploring the psychological depths of a full cast of well-developed characters. Sullivan manages to bring not only Cross, Ottey and their new recruit Alice Mackenzie to life on the page, but he is also careful to provide just enough characterization for suspects, victims and family members to fully immerse readers in the story.
It all begins when a man named Leonard Carpenter, who by the looks of things is homeless, turns up murdered. When a convenient suspect presents himself early on, it looks like the case might be open and shut, but leave it to DS Cross to look just a little bit further. As it turns out, Leonard hadn’t been homeless for long; in fact, he used to be a dentist and he’s survived by a fairly well-off family — with one important exception: his wife, who was murdered several years earlier. The status of that case: cold.
Who really killed Leonard? Who killed his wife Hillary all those years before? Two murders in the same family seems like a pretty big coincidence, and Cross doesn’t believe in coincidence. Are the two crimes related? As Cross and his colleague open up the investigation, these questions only lead to more questions.
The case takes twists and turns that will keep readers pressing on towards the conclusion, and while the case may eventually be wrapped at the end, there is still plenty of mystery left regarding Cross’s personality and relation to his coworkers after the final page. Good news for readers: this is just book one in a brand new series that promises to follow DS Cross and his team from the MCU on many a future case.
