A new benchmark
Despite its sleepy name, don't sleep on "The Dentist"

Wouldn’t you like to be a rube at the editorial conference table in New York City that contributes to the naming of a novel?  Some titles just appear so ill-considered and even more fatuous when they’re featured in bookstores and libraries. And advanced reading copies from publicists come with some of the damnedest titles and most ponderous narrative accompaniment and endorsements. It seems as though six or eight midlist novelists – including the omnipresent Lee Child – all effuse the genius of the author with the loathsome “unputdownable” felicitations. 

Well, I apologize for the above vilification, because today I’m bringing you a genuine gem of a police procedural by the eminent Tim Sullivan with the most inane title: “The Dentist.” Sullivan has written and seven previous novels with two-word titles beginning with “The.” We’d suspect that the second word precisely sets the leitmotif of the story, but the dentist in Sullivan’s “The Dentist” is like the backboard behind a basketball hoop. The story is hardly about him, but without him, there can’t be a story to tell. And before he was dead, he was living on skid row while still owning a stately home and having ample funds in retirement from … dentistry.

If that’s not confusing enough, confusion becomes the undercurrent of Sullivan’s remarkable narrative about Detective Sgt. George Cross, of the Avon and Somerset Police in the burbs of London. It’s with Cross that everything becomes clear. And clear with Cross is crystal, unambiguous, perspicuous, logical, straightforward, lucid, indisputable, irrefutable, beyond doubt and unarguable. 

You see, Cross is on the autism spectrum. And “The Dentist” is about Cross and his unflappable investigation into the death of a homeless street dweller who used to be a dentist, which none of his supervisors or fellow investigators care to look into.

To give agency to the ragged deadbeat, Cross ruffled institutional superiors by zeroing in on the forensics of the dead dentist as he would if it were the unfortunate ending of royalty. Acclaim for his investigative zeal and intuitive order of examination is withheld by his precinct stablemates. But they admire Cross’ uncanny observations and remarkable intuition.

“The Dentist” is the nonpareil crime fiction book of the year as far as I’m concerned. Sullivan captures the intellect and Cross while giving the reader an education on autism spectrum disorder with every logical obsession Cross brings to everything he does. Cross’ superiors hate him because he won’t take their advice about how to conduct investigations unless it conforms to his exact perception of logic. 

One of Cross’ quiet observations, for instance, is that the dentist was wearing contact lenses – unusual for skid row, and moreover, the lenses were scleral lenses. (The attention Cross gets from his fellow coppers when his notes remarked about the scleral lenses sent me scurrying off to learn just what the hell scleral contact lenses are.) 

Cross’ perspicuity is infectious, and that’s the reason he continues to investigate crime. Everyone who knows Cross doesn’t like him, including his female partner – always a rookie and always a woman – who hates the ground he walks on. Nonetheless, we all know he’s nobody’s fool. He solves all his cases, even if they’ve been cold for years. And you now have the unique opportunity to learn to love somebody you can’t stand to be around.

So here we are with a dead bum who’s been living on skid row. He has impeccable dental work, owns books, writes notes about investigating his wife’s suspicious death 15 years ago, has money in his pocket, and the hook was set with the scleral contact lenses. 

All the cops, detectives, sergeants, captains and division chiefs want to dispose of the soiled corpse and won’t even bother to investigate. Cross, on the other hand, has a mote of overlooked evidence and none of his superiors have the temerity to discharge the infuriating tracker of hardly measurable clues and unexplored forensic evidence. He gets results; they get promotions.

There’s not much more I care to tell you about this book. It’s very different, and you won’t realize that until it has planted the hook deep in your psyche, and you can’t shake it loose. Even when you come to the last page of “The Dentist,” you will never get it out of your mind. You’ll compare it to the next “Murder Ink” gem as a benchmark for the pure logic of forensic morphology.

See where Sullivan’s Cross takes you. “The Dentist” dropped two weeks ago. Ask Maria’s Bookshop for their generous 15% “Murder Ink” discount. My advance reader’s copy has “The Dentist” coming out in original paperback at a price of $17. It will be a mistake to overlook this gem for a measly $14.45.