Richard Osman’s books are smash-hits … just don’t call them ‘cosy’
The new book in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series is now out – and he’s just signed a $20m deal for at least two more.
As ideas go, it was one of his best. But British TV presenter-turned-writer Richard Osman – king of the “cosy crime” genre and author of a smash-hit series called The Thursday Murder Club – says his lightbulb moment had to wait until his 50s, to work.
The 52-year-old was visiting his mother, in her upmarket retirement village in Sussex, southern England, when he came up with the idea for The Thursday Murder Club.
It was serendipitous, he says, because he had the idea, the time to write it and a desire to try something new; but mostly because he was at the right stage of life.
“I wouldn’t have written this book if I was in my 20s,” he says, from his home in West London. “This was the sort of thing I’ve been working towards my whole life. It represents me more than anything else I’ve done. You look backwards and think it was obvious, but you know, there’s an awful lot of chance in life, isn’t there.”
Osman’s gamble on a story about four friends in a retirement village – Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, who form The Thursday Murder Club, paid off more handsomely than he could ever have dreamed.
He wrote the first book secretly, as, “No one really wants to read their friend’s novel in progress, right?”, and because he didn’t want to get a publishing deal on the back of his TV fame. “I kept it quiet, until I felt I had something that represented me properly,” he says.
However, even he was surprised by the publishing frenzy that ensued – when The Thursday Murder Club was published in 2020 it became the fastest-selling UK crime debut of all time. “It snowballed so quickly,” he says. “You know, you have a million ideas. Some of them work. Most of them don’t. I’m very glad this is one that worked.”
His fourth book in the series, The Last Devil To Die, is out now and Osman recently signed a deal of reportedly “over £10m” for two more Murder books, plus a new series about a father and daughter-in-law detective duo.
His success is down to a combination of masterful storytelling, good-natured humour and comforting characters – the UK’s Sunday Times recently dubbed it, “The Famous Five with older people”, although Enid Blyton didn’t have plotlines around assassinated octogenarian antiques dealers and consignments of heroin. But the “cosy crime” label is not one that sits well with Osman.
“These books are not about the shopkeeper with a sweet shop on the south coast solving crime. I’m trying to tell the truth about being older. It’s real crime, real human beings, real trouble,” he says. “I think I would describe myself as many things, before describing my books as ‘cosy’.”
A fan of crime fiction, Osman says he couldn’t write what he didn’t love. “You have to write what you read. I love having the tightness of that format; those restrictions. At the end, we find out who did it, but on the way, you can dance around and create characters who people care about,” he says.
While his characters are loveable, the crime novel he most admires has the ultimate antihero. If there was one book in the world he wished he’d written, he says, it’s Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. “The prose is so great and the plot so tight,” he says. “She wrote a character who’s sort of the worst man in the world, but who you want to get away with everything.”
He’s also an avid viewer of TV crime, from Poirot to Columbo. “I’m not sure it’s possible for me to love anyone in the world more than I love Columbo,” he says. He’s currently enjoying Stan’s Columbo-homage, Poker Face, with Natasha Lyonne, “It’s the best bit of telly I’ve seen in many years,” he says, as well as Steve Martin’s Only Murders in the Building. “It’s great to see Martin Short and Steve Martin having so much fun. That’s what I love about crime fiction – people call it a genre, but it’s not really.”
The Thursday Murder Club is also being made into a movie, by Steven Spielberg. Production has been delayed by the entertainment industry strikes, but even though he’s excited, he’s staying off set. “I will go nowhere near the script,” he says, “I’m happier sitting down writing the next book.”
What he is delighted to do, however, is embark on his first tour of Australia, in November. “I’ve never been and I’m genuinely excited,” he says. “Australia feels very familiar,” he says, explaining he has distant family in Bateman’s Bay in NSW.
“Whatever we say and however much we wind them up, (Brits) love Australians. It’s such a lovely, symbiotic relationship.”
The Last Devil To Die, $34.99, Viking, is out now. Richard Osman is touring Australia in November, see penguin.com.au for details.
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