The Bookseller: A DS George Cross Mystery by Tim Sullivan Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: crime thriller, mystery
Series: DS George Cross #7
Pages: 368
Published by Atlantic Crime on June 2, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
“One of the most iconic British fictional detectives of the 21st century.”—Daily Mail
Read enough, and you’ll learn how to get away with murder
Detective Sergeant George Cross has a knack for dismissing red herrings: He goes by the cold hard facts, and nothing else. But with a concerning development in his personal life, Cross is hopelessly distracted. He needs to rely on those around him: an entirely foreign concept.
When the body of a bookseller is discovered lying in a pool of blood in his Bristol bookshop, the police have one question: How did the man meet such a violent, murderous end in this peaceful place?
Bookselling may be a quiet profession, but it's full of ambitious characters who know the value of a rare book and the importance of careful plotting. With their extensive reading, they might know enough to get away with murder. But will book learning be enough to fool the tenacious DS George Cross?
My Review:
There’s both a hush and a halo that settles over the places where books are present in large quantities. Meaning that both libraries and bookstores – and the people who inhabit them – are believed to be a lot quieter, safer and even more trustworthy than many of them deserve.
(It’s that atmosphere that gives libraries their “mom and apple pie” feeling as well as the reason that entirely too many people believe that they are safe places to leave their belongings and their young children completely unattended when in fact, they are no more – also no less – safe than any other large and open public space. Places like parks and shopping malls and big box stores and anywhere else where strangers rub shoulders and one generally keeps one’s precious items close at hand.)
The same is true of bookstores, particularly of the antiquarian variety, where old and valuable volumes are kept behind lock and key, and where literary treasures abound around every corner and every shelf. Or at least the possibility of finding one.
But bookstores are also commercial enterprises like any other, they make a profit – or they go out of business. They take too many losses, and their situation gets precarious. Or desperate. Or, in the case of Ed Squires and the bookshop he co-owns with his father, Squire Books, cause enough for murder.
Ed’s father, 90-year-old Torquil Squire, still a legend in the book trade, is the unfortunate person who finds his son’s dead body. In his office. In their shop. Along with their 20-something niece and employee, Percy, locked in terror in the bathroom after seeing the killer exit the building. Or so she claims.
Percy is a bit of the flighty, dramatic type, always acting and sounding like she’s the star of a play that’s going on inside her head. Or so the family claims. She’s not quite dealing with the real world most of the time. And she’s certainly not dealing well with THIS.
But the thing she’s not dealing with well is the event that brings the newly promoted DI Ottey and her police partner, DS Cross, to the scene of the murder. A place that is all too familiar to Cross, even in circumstances that have become entirely too unfamiliar for Cross to deal with well.
Once upon a time, Cross and his father, Raymond, were regular visitors to Squire Books, as Raymond had a lifelong interest in the works of the well-known 19th century engineer Isembard Kingdom Brunel, and Squire Books, in the person of the then sole proprietor, Torquil Squire, often let Raymond study their collection of Brunel’s works, knowing that he couldn’t afford to buy but couldn’t resist a peek. It was that kind of haven, back in the day when Torquil Squire and Raymond Cross were both younger men, and their songs were still little boys following after their fathers.
Now Ed Squire is a murder victim, George Cross is investigating his murder, Torquil Squire is an old man whose family is falling apart, and Raymond Cross is about to have surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.
None of them are going to come out of this story intact. The only question left is just how broken the survivors are going to be when it’s all over.
Escape Rating A+: Once again, I needed a reading pick-me-up. And once again, DS George Cross delivered. Not that this is a “fun” book exactly, but it sucked me right in and didn’t let go until the end.
The book is absorbing – and very much so. At its heart, there are two big and really human stories going on here. And there’s a murder that lives up to something I observed in my review of The Teacher, that the murdered member of the titular profession of each book is not exactly a sterling example of that profession.
Something that is certainly true of this particular bookseller.
But the human stories that underlie this murder mystery are sadder, deeper and more universal. First, there’s the obvious, that this is a story about fathers and sons. The center of the murder, goes back into the family AND business history of Torquil Squire and his son Ed, Torquil’s former business partner AND brother-in-law Denholm Simpson and his son Nigel and that their sons have inherited the old grudges and business-related sins of both their fathers. While the center of this chapter in DS George Cross’ ongoing personal saga, and for that matter, the center of Cross’ life, is his relationship with his father, Raymond.
Intersecting with all of the above is the very human dilemma that “the problem with wanting to change things is that things change,” while the problem with wanting things not to change is that the human condition guarantees that they’ll change anyway.
And change is not something that George Cross deals with well, either in his personal OR his professional life. Throughout the course of this seventh book in the series, he’s dealing – often badly – with profound changes on all sides, from his police partner’s promotion from being his equal to being his superior in rank, to coming face-to-face with his father’s mortality. (While that latter confrontation is not final, his father’s surgery forces him to recognize that the person he has relied on his entire life will not always be with him no matter what either of them wants).
That Cross solves the murder with his meticulous investigation skills is not a surprise. What is a surprise, as usual, are the lengths he has to go to and the number of twists and turns he has to navigate to get there. None of Cross’ cases are ever straightforward which is part of the fascination of the series.
That he manages to work his way through the many personal changes he is facing in this story better than he – and many of those around him – expected was not only marvelous to read but gives this reader high hopes for the series continuing well into the future. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the upcoming eighth entry, The Tailor, coming next week in the U.K. and early next month here in the U.S.
