Told in hauntingly elegiac prose, My Policeman-the book-is a sorrowful story about the ways in which expectations of conformity harm us all. In the latter timeline, Patrick has recently had a stroke, and-against Tom’s objections-Marion has taken him out of hospice to care for him herself at the Burgess home.Įven at a time when queer media has progressed past the need for tragic tales from straight allies about secret love affairs, Roberts’ novel is a stunner. The book and the movie alike jump between the 1950s, following the events at the story’s heart as they unfold, and Marion and Tom’s life as a retired couple in the 1990s. In case you’re unfamiliar, My Policeman follows a doomed love triangle in postwar Brighton: A young policeman named Tom Burgess (Styles) marries schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin), his sister’s childhood friend-but his heart belongs to Patrick Hazelwood (David Dawson), a slightly-older man who works as an art curator at the local museum. (Styles was even photographed with the book earlier that year, and the novel made appearances on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.) The existence of the film-and Styles’ involvement in it-ignited a firestorm of interest in Roberts’ nearly decade-old book, and an American edition hit shelves for the first time on Aug. until last year.Īnd the novel might have remained an obscure, “the girls that get it get it”-type gem until Amazon announced its Styles-starring adaptation in September 2020. Though it was met with quiet acclaim when first released in Britain, My Policeman flew so far under the radar that it wasn’t even published in the U.S. As a matter of fact, the 2012 novel by British author Bethan Roberts-the film’s source material-owes most of its American readers to the pop star. If you first came to know of the 1950s-set romantic drama My Policeman as “that movie starring Harry Styles as a gay cop,” well, consider this article a safe space. Spoilers for the My Policeman book and film below.

My policeman book harry styles