In The Politician, the screenwriter turned novelist’s latest DS George Cross mystery, the neurodivergent sleuth searches for the killer of a former mayor.

How did this series originate?

I’d always wanted to write a book but never had the guts. I’d been screenwriting for 30 years, and writing a novel seemed to me like the grown-up version of screenwriting; a mystery seemed familiar because I’d directed Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. It also came from a personal interest in autism in the workplace. It struck me that to have a detective who was on the spectrum, who rigidly adheres to logic and patterns, seems to fit into a noble tradition going back to Holmes and Poe’s Dupin.

Initially, you self-published the series. Why?

I was shunned by a few literary agents because I’m not on the spectrum myself. So, I said to my wife, “I’ve done so much work on this, I’m going to self-publish the first two. And if I get knocked back by the autistic community, then I’ll stop.”

Did that happen?

Quite the opposite. I was warmly embraced. I’ve had so many emails from people with autism, their families, even some police officers on the spectrum. Within four months of self-publishing, I’d had over 200,000 downloads. Then the publishers came.

What’s the hardest part about getting into George’s head?

I often write in sort of a neurotypical way, but I always do what I call a “George pass” to make sure that everything is as it should be. Sometimes, I’ll write reactions that he has to certain conversations, then I’ll go back and realize that he would not react in that way. I have a lot of rules with George: he doesn’t speculate, he doesn’t have gut instincts about cases.

But presumably his colleagues do.

Yes, they discuss those things around him, but his strict following of logic goes to the extent that if they arrest someone and he’s not convinced, he will go out and find that person an alibi. Some people on the autism spectrum have a need for things to be right, which of course, completely lends itself to justice. George doesn’t deal with hypothesis or speculation. He has a reputation where people believe what he does is correct, so if he has a hunch that’s wrong, he’ll have wasted people’s time. He’s very happy for other people to hypothesize in his presence, though—often it sparks a train of logical thought that leads him to his solution.