Richard Osman: The king of cosy crime expands his empire

British TV presenter and novelist Richard Osman, of best-selling The Thursday Murder Club fame, has temporarily parked the adventures of retirees for a new series. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Richard Osman brings his signature wit to a new project, but insists it’s the characters making the jokes. Picture: Penguin Books

What does the king of “cosy crime” do when he’s at the top? Expand his empire, of course.

British TV presenter and novelist, Richard Osman, 53, of best-selling The Thursday Murder Club fame, has temporarily parked the adventures of retirees Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim for a new series, We Solve Murders.

 

We’re introduced to retired policeman-turned-private-detective Steve Wheeler and daughter-in-law Amy, a bodyguard, who enjoy a more globe-trotting adventure than their retirement home forerunners, but with all the wit and charm of his previous books.

The book made this journalist laugh out loud three times in the first three pages, something Osman, when I interview him, seems genuinely pleased to hear. “I love how much the books make people laugh,” he says, over the phone from his home in West London, stressing it’s not him, but the characters who come up with the jokes. “The characters are allowed to be funny, not the author. I will think of a response that one of the characters says, that makes me laugh.”

Having secured a book deal of reportedly “over 15 million” for the new series, Osman says he aims to alternate between the two franchises. “I’ve started on the next Thursday Murder Club book, which will be out in 2025, then I will come back to We Solve Murders, leap-frogging each other,” he says.

While he says he initially felt guilty for cheating on his original characters, he explains he got over it by envisaging the gang having a well-earned rest in Cooper’s Chase retirement village.

“When I worked out The Thursday Murder Club are just an hour-and-a-half down the road in Kent, while Steve is in The New Forest, I thought, ‘They’ve got their feet up, because they had a tough time in The Last Devil to Die’,” he says.

However, the two gangs are unlikely to ever join forces in the future. “For boring, legal reasons, they’re not allowed, because of the film rights,” he says.

“Somebody would sue me. But you never know, there’s Marvel and DC sometimes – maybe 10 years down the line we will have a cinematic universe.”

The movie version of The Thursday Murder Club is currently filming, with a stellar cast. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie and Ben Kingsley, plus Osman’s actor wife Ingrid Oliver, the movie is directed by Harry Potter’s Chris Columbus and is expected to be released next year.

However, Osman says he’s not involved. “Chris Columbus is the loveliest man in the world, the cast is incredible and Steven Spielberg is producing it and that’s amazing,” he says, “but I’m staying absolutely at arm’s length. You just have to be incredibly sanguine about it and let them tell their version of the story.”

Surely, he’s tempted to quiz Ingrid about what they’ve been up to? No, he says, adding: “If I want to go along they let me and they’re very nice to me, but I just stand on the side and watch.”

Osman’s wife will star the film adaptation of his first Thursday Murder Club book.

Ingrid plays Joyce’s daughter Joanna and hadn’t wanted to appear in the movie, he says. “When Chris first came over, we went for dinner and were chatting about it. He’s seen her in films and TV, and said, ‘Why are we not talking about you being in it?’ She was horrified, but had come off a big hit play (The RSC’s Kyoto) and so literally, the day afterwards, she’s straight on set. She’s loving acting with that massive group of talent.”

Speaking of talent, early reviews of We Solve Murders have been positive, with one even saying it’s “miraculous”.

What it isn’t, however, is a Murder-Club-by-numbers, as Osman, who has always bridled at the label “cosy crime”, takes a swipe at AI in the novel by having his villain put his emails through Chat GPT, because it “instantly deletes your personality”.

A bit like the scores of copycat books which followed his, often right down to the jacket design, perhaps?

“I think the generation of books that have come afterwards are inspired by what they imagine the Club might be if they haven’t actually read them,” he says, “but if you’ve read them, they’re fairly uncompromising. Lots of bad things happen. I try and write with real honesty about, you know, grief and dementia and crime. Some of the books that have come afterwards aren’t doing that. They’re doing a version of a version, which is very like AI, to be honest. It’s missing the point,” he says.

As to the success of We Solve Murders, he says he hopes readers fall in love with the new characters as he has, but he’s approaching it with his usual modesty.

“I only have one rule and that’s do the work,” he says. “Whatever else happens – success, failure, money, no money – do the work. Everything else is noise.”

We Solve Murders, (Penguin Books) by Richard Osman, $34.99, is out now.