Osman

A new crime series by Richard Osman called We Solve Murders has been announced, after the huge success of his Thursday Murder Club novels.The beloved elderly sleuths from the Pointless presenter’s bestselling series are taking a break for now. “I put them through quite a lot in the last book, The Last Devil to Die, so I’ve given them a year just to relax, kick back, rejuvenate. But they’ll be coming back in 2025,” Osman said.We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. Photograph: VikingIn the meantime, We Solve Murders, which is…

If one tends to approach the side projects of those already successful in other mediums with a certain wariness, then it’s only because so many such side projects can whiff of self-indulgence. Not every songwriter is a TV presenter-in-waiting, just as not every actor is as accomplished a painter as they may like to think, no matter how splattered their smock.Mat Osman does not fall into this bracket. For a rock star – he’s one of the founding members of the band Suede and continues to serve as their bassist – the…

The Ghost Theatre begins with a London rooftop chase worthy of Mission: Impossible. Our young heroine, Shay, hurtles above Eastcheap and St Peter’s Hill, St Paul’s Church a landmark in the near distance. “She came down with a crash, sending a flock of pigeons skywards in a soft explosion of feathers. They spread like a fountain and she repeated the catechism under her breath: The gods are birds and the birds are gods. She let its cadence guide her feet. The gods – step – are birds – step – and the birds – step – are gods…

Theatre groups are like rock bands, says the musician Mat Osman, fixing tea in his dressing room before the sound check. Their natural life spans are short; they tend to spark, combust and collapse. It’s a tale as old as time. They might as well be reading from a script.“Every band,” he says. “Every acting troupe. They all set out feeling that they’re doing something fresh and new. But it’s like a Greek tragedy. It’s always hubris, and you always overshoot and think you’re better than you are. It’s always the same story.…

The Thursday Murder Club – Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim – is back. This time round, Richard Osman’s “four harmless pensioners” are investigating the case of Bethany Waites, a television reporter who was looking into a huge VAT fraud when her car was driven off a cliff in the middle of the night and whose body was never found.Joyce lures Bethany’s former colleague, South East Tonight presenter Mike Waghorn (“I play squash, I moisturise and nature takes care of the rest”) to a meeting with the club. They want to pick…

Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club was the most borrowed book from UK libraries in the year 2020-21, while the prolific bestseller James Patterson was the most borrowed author overall.The Public Lending Right (PLR) data, which collates information on library loans and pays authors for every book borrowed, showed that crime and thriller books were the most popular genres among library users.Following Osman’s novel, the second most borrowed book was Blue Moon, from Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. Other crime and…

“So, how does it feel to be a publishing phenomenon?” the Irish writer Marian Keyes asks TV producer-presenter and now fellow novelist Richard Osman, over Diet Cokes and chocolate croissants. “A record-breaker of record-breakers?”For once, publishing “phenomenon” (pronounced as four words by Keyes for emphasis) is no exaggeration: Osman’s first novel The Thursday Murder Club sold 45,000 copies in three days in 2020 and his follow-up, The Man Who Died Twice (released in paperback this month), was one of the fastest-selling…