Literary prejudice is a funny thing. All of us are guilty of it. The more we know our own tastes as readers, the more set in our ways we become about the things we value in a book and our personal subjective notions of merit, the more we all become adept at judging a book by its genre, by its subject matter, and let's be honest, by its cover. When I first got a job in publishing, my uncle Patrick bought me a copy of a biography of one of
the world's great publishers. It was called Maxwell Perkins, Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg. It won the National Book Awards in the US the year it came out. The book was great, and Perkins made for a fascinating subject. He's the man who discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. By any measure, a hugely influential figure in the world of books. But there's one line in that book that's really stayed with me more than any other, Perkins said.
Apparently publishers aren't looking for the next big thing. They're looking for the last big thing in the guessing game that is publishing. Imitation is the safe path. It's why at some point in the early two thousands, every second Ya book was part of some multi book series about an orphan with unexpected magical powers at some kind of secret boarding school. If something works, the theory seems to go,
then just repeat it again and again and again. In the world of crime fiction, if you walk into your local bookshop or library, it's not hard to extrapolate what's worked in recent years. Go on at the serial killer, slashers and the Nordic noir. What seems to be proliferating now is books with cozy, even twee covers, handwritten titles, a line drawing of some safe domestic item, and a convoluted name that could have been generated by chat gpt.
The Beethoven Society in the Afternoon at the Vicar Edge, jaw the Sunset, Bicycle Thieves, or tea Time at thirteen Windermere Avenue, that kind of thing. Beware the imitators, but follow where they're leading. You take that trail all the way back to the books that kicked off this latest trend.
Because Richard Osmond's Thursday Murder Club series are true originals, funny, moving, gripping and anything but generic if you've read them, and based on their stratospheric sales, there's a reasonable chance you have. You're already entirely in the tank. And if you haven't put your prejudices aside and settle in, you're in for a treat. I'm Michael Williams and this is Read This the show about the books we love and the stories behind them. You might already be familiar with Richard Osmond
for his TV work. He's the creator and presenter of the BBC game show Pointless. Maybe you've seen on one of those ubiquitous British panel shows like Taskmaster or Would I Light You? Or QI. Richard Osman wears many hats, from television producer to comedian to podcaster. Now, however, it's as a best selling author he's most known, and he's
going from strength to strength. There are four books so far in the Thursday Murder Club series, following the amateurs sleuthing of a quartet of septagenarian residents of an aged care community called Cooper's Chase. They're about mortality and old age, and they're both funny and page turners. It's little wonder they become international best sellers. The first book in the series is being adapted into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan,
Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley. But four books in four best sellers, in Richard's changing it up, He's launching a whole new series with a whole new set of characters. We Solve Murders follows the retired cop Steve and his bodyguard daughter in law Amy, in a novel that shows that Richard Osman knows exactly what his readers want. When
we have the chance to speak. Last year, I did a reread back through the Thursday Murder books, and one of the things that struck me was that in the first one, there is a kind of centrality, maybe even a default centrality to Chris and Donner, your two police characters, that perhaps with the first book, active Police Officers seem like a natural entry point for telling the kind of crime story you wanted to do. And as the series has gone on, they've not receded entirely, but they've certainly
given way on center stage. And I'm interested when starting a new series. Was it clear to you again, formal law enforcement isn't a framework that interests you terribly?
Yeah, largely because and this is a subconscious thing I think. I think if you've set something properly within the world of law enforcement, you have to do a lot of research. And that's something doesn't interest me. If I'm spending an hour, you know, I'm working on We Saw Murders on it to be an hour typing up and you know, writing something, rather than an hour looking into whether a deputy chief inspector is a higher rank than a you know whatever. I just I'm not interested in doing it, and I
like the world of criminality. I'm very interested in that world. So Amy in this book, Who's the daughter in law, is a bodyguard, which is a big industry and an industry that is around celebrity but also around criminality. Steve as an ex cop. You know, there's lots of people who got in that lovely hinterland between criminal and law enforcer, and that, to me is an interesting world where the
police don't really need to get involved this. There's very little police work in this book, and what police work there is is fairly toxic.
I would say you're very good at writing kind of makeshift and found families and the familiar relationship between Steve and Amy, the father in law daughter in law pairing. I can't remember saying that particular configuration before. Was that what drew to it? Or is there something about that closeness? But with distance building that particularly a build the.
Question that makeshift off found family. I have not thought about it in that way, but I do like to write about that. It's an interesting combination, isn't that father in law daughter in law, because there is an absolute closeness, but you're not related by blood, And it's very possible to have a relationship with an in law that is very distant. Amy, who is the daughter in law and
the bodyguard that brought up in the care system. Steve, who is the ex cop father in law, is a fairly recent widower, and so they both have something they find in each other. They both find the need to lean on each other. And neither of them, by the way, would ever speak that out loud or have any interest in speaking that out loud. But they're both from places and families where they don't have those connections anymore. They
both need a connection. So I love writing about that thing of where we find love and how we find it and who we need and who actually cares for us and people who find it difficult to love or be loved. Loving each other I always think is feels very powerful to me. But you know, I love that the father in law docter in law thing. That's where it all started. I just thought that's an interesting world, and then I explored it from there.
Really, the backgrounds that both of them have that you just subscribed there give you the chance for a kind of set of thematics that are very reminiscent of a Thursday murder club, around the things that we live for and the things that we're frightened of. Steve to a certain extent, you know, there are ways in which he has let his life become deliberately small in the wake of the loss of his wife. Whereas for Amy, it's about seeking that adrenaline, seeking that rush that gives her
life meaning in shape. Do you think in those terms often about fear and courage.
Yeah, I think it's interesting. There's two big responses to trauma, aren't there, And they represent to those that you know, the two big responses that are either to run or to hide, you know, And so Amy runs and she goes around the world and you know, never stays still, never stays in the same place, so she doesn't, you know, she can't confront herself with whatever it is that she
doesn't want to be confronted with. And Steve, as you say, he hides, and he makes everything very small, and he protects himself and he make sure nothing can get in. And those are two very very common responses to any sort of trauma. And I like the fact that the two of them, and by the way, that wasn't a deliberate choice or anything, it was just I find both of those interesting responses. And I wanted their actions to
have an opposition to each other. I wanted Amy to need to do one sort of thing and I don't need Steve to absolutely not want to do that sort of thing at all. Then, so that you've got whatever scene you do, you've got someone who doesn't want to be there but has to be there. And just as a writer, and if you want comedy, if you want pathos, if you want any of that stuff, it's all in there. But yeah, so one of them runs and one of them hides, but they both love each other.
I want to ask you about Rosie as a character. Can you set her up for those lists who haven't read the book?
In I certainly can. So you know, I had this central duo in mind, Steve and Amy, and that was great, and I thought, oh, you know what, Amy does have to have a client at the start of this weech. She needs to be looking after somebody. So I thought, I'll give her a client and I'll just have a conversation and just find out a bit about who Amy is. Which how I like to come up with characters I'm sickman in a situation and make them have a conversation.
And I had this sort of idea of a Jackie Collins esque type of character who's living on her own sort of private island. And so it's this character Rosy D'Antonio, who's the world's best selling author if you don't count the child. And I had this conversation between Amy and Rosie where essentially I'm trying to as a writer, I'm trying to find out about Amy, trying to get a little bit about what she care about, you know, what
does she like at her job? And Rosie just was sitting there with like a cocktail in the middle of a ball showed like a swan just the stuff she was saying. I was like, oh, my God, you're amazing. And I've got Steve and I've got Amy, which is lovely, But why don't have a third wheel on this journey? Somebody who literally lives for adventures from mischief is of absolutely indeterminate age. No one has the first clue of
how old she can be. The certain biographical clues that the list of belution might be might be fairly old. But she just wants fun, you know, she wants an adventure. And of course we find out a bit more about her, and as the book goes on as well. But suddenly I've got these three people, and any scene that comes along, I know it's funny if one of them is in charge of that scene. I know, I know anything I can come up with in the plot. I know I've
got these three people who can carry us anywhere. And so the two hander absolutely accidentally became a three hander. But I'm delighted that it did. I think, I think, I think people will love Rosie. She's quite a scene stealer.
I have no doubt. She says at one point early on, something along the lines of I'd rather be murdered than be bored, which I think is it's not a bad cradle.
That yeah, exactly that. That very much sums it up. And it's funny you say that, because to me, that's the process of writing. I do it quite a lot via dialogue, and so I'm just having a conversation and you know, Amy says something or other than she's than Rosie said, I'd rather be murdered than bored. And he say, okay, great, that's a tent peg. I can absolutely knock that into the ground and start my understanding of who Rosie is. And that's like one of the top notes of who
she is. And that's such a lovely way of creating characters. Just have them talk to each other and then them say something. You go, oh, oh, that's a bold statement, and let's find out who you are, you know via that. But yeah, I'd rather be murdered than bored. And she means it too.
Having invented Rosie, having invented a very successful crime novel, How tempt did are you to try your hand atwriting? Death pulls the trigger?
Oh? I mean, every time I come up with a title for Rosie d'antonia book, there's like, knock, who's dead, it's death oclock. You're like, ah, just I want to read. I just absolutely want to read this now, you know, if any fan fiction versions of it want to come out. But you know, I love the idea of you know, we had to really have a Jackie Collins of crime particularly, and it's a be a fun label for someone to get.
But yeah, I want to see the front covers. I want to see the sort of American TV adaptation of these things. But yeah, her whole world, I just think I so desperately want her to be real.
Do you clearly have fun with naming things. The other name that I'm particularly enamored with in this book is Steve's very imaginative name for his private investigation company, which is called Steve Investigate. It's, much to Amy's horror. Details like that are a great way into character, aren't they. I mean that says everything about Steve in the Way's mind works that you need it to.
Yeah, I think I think it's exactly that. You know, the choices we make, And yeah, who who would call their investigation company Steve Investigates because Amy, by the way, he wants to call it, I think Maverick Steel or something like that, because branding is important. Now Steve goes well, look, my name is Steve and I investigate and it's a simple thing. But there you go. Okay, I understand those where those two characters are coming from. Now, I understand
the oppositions there might be. I understand that, you know, the kind of pull and push we might have just from a simple thing like that. But you know it it speaks to the title of the book, We Solved Murders, being the name of a detective agency. It's like, well, I mean, it's the second I had that title. When I talked to my agent after with thirty Medal Club, I said, I've got this new idea. I want to
do it. I said, look, it's not going to be called this, but at the moment it's called We Solved Murders. And she went, oh, that's a great name for a book. Yeah, but you can't I can't recall but we Solved Murders. It's it's very on the nose. And she was like, no, no, no, that's I think. I think people will love that, and they go, oh, okay. So honestly, if I had an investigated an agency, it would be called Richard Investigates. So you know, we Solved murders.
When we come back. Richard reveals the reason he probably won't be writing a six hundred page Booker Prize winning novel, and cheers the advice he gave to Pierce Brosna. How far into the Thursday Murder books did you realize that you wanted to try and cut your teeth on a different series.
I think that, you know, when I wrote the first Thursday Murder Club book, all I wanted to do was write a book that sold enough copies they let me write the second book, and then still enough to make me write the third. And I think I got sort of three or four years in and I thought, well, listen, I am an author. Now you know. I've always been a writer. I've done journalism, I've done sitcom and done all sorts of things. But I finally think, Okay, now
you are an author. And if I'm going to do this for the next twenty thirty years, which I'm very hopeful that I am going to do, I'm not going to just write the same series. So I wanted to introduce a new world to people. I wanted to introduce new characters. I wanted to have a bit of fun with something. You know, I want to enjoy the next
twenty years. And I want readers to really really enjoy the next twenty years as well, and I'm going to do that by inventing different worlds and showing people different things and seeing if they bite. I think, not.
Only is it a new world and a new set of characters, but Liz, in genre terms, a kind of slight sideway step. It's still unmistakably a Richard Osman book, which is a great thing to be able to say if you think that five years ago we couldn't say what a Richard Olsman book was, but now you've kind of made it your own. But this one that has as much of a debt to kind of thriller conventions as it does to the old idea of the cozy, even though I know that's a term that you reject.
Yeah, I wanted to, you knows. There's certain things, you know. I love the thirty Medal Clubs so much, and I love those four characters. There are things that they cannot really do. You know, they can't jump out of helicopters. They're probably not going to go on a breakneck race around the world. And that's the sort of thing I wanted to write because again, I read quime fiction. I read thrillers, you know, big airport stuff. That's the kind
of stuff I love it. So I thought, well, I want to bring the sensibility that I have, hopefully a bit of the wits, hopefully a bit of that kind of British warmth to a more thrillery type story. Listen, I haven't written a kind of hard boiled thriller. Is
unmistakably me page one onwards. But as you say, you know, I know the conventions of that genre because I read that genre and I love that genre, and I never do any of this stuff consciously, but I just being able to write in that world, but to be able to bring what I love to bring to books, which is character and heart and warmth and feelings, was a really lovely challenge and something that yeah, I enjoyed a great deal.
I can't help but notice it already in maybe two answers. Both times you have vaguely apologetically name checked the Cooper's Chase mob, like you're being disloyal to them. You're doing these interviews, and clearly there's part of you that's wired to go God, I hope that I don't feel like I'm playing away.
Well do you know what. Well, first, yes, disloyalty to the characters, of course. But funnily enough, as soon as I realized that both of these books could exist at the same time, I thought, it's okay. I thought, listen, Joyce and Elizabeth. They're happily they're just watching TV in
another county, So that's okay. But it's a reader's thing, really, you know, I've had a career of you know, you try and make something good, and then you try and make something else good, and you have to just bring readers with you, and so I have this guild of just saying to readers, I really, I honestly know that you wanted a fifth thirty Murder Club book. I absolutely
get that that's what you think you wanted. Tell me now, you're going to enjoy this book, and in a couple of years time, you'll want the second one of this one. And I'm going to keep doing Thirsty Murder Club. But I'm going to keep doing this. And it's just the idea of saying to readers, I promise you're in safe hands. I promise if you like the stuff that I do, you're going to like this one. Too.
You're the musician doing the stadium gig who gets up and says, I'm going to play as having from the new album and the mood just palpably drops.
In the room exactly. So you have to absolutely sort of hammock it between two absolute bangers. That's that's the key. And then in next year's tour the new material is the banger. So you know, that's always the transition people have to make.
Are you an Agatha Christie reader?
Yeah, I'm a big Agatha Christie fan. You know, I think about Christie a lot when I write, actually, because she would write two books a year. You know, she would absolutely churn this stuff out and it's endured and it's lasted, and you know, she's not somebod who spent five years writing a book and panicked over every single, you know, sentence. She just thought, what's going to entertain people today? And that's the thing that's that's you know, lasted.
And that's what I was trying to think with we've sold murders. I was thinking, think in twenty years time, don't worry about this year, just thinking in twenty years time, what do you want people to know of you? What do you want people to have read of you, and you know it's it's all going to be part of that chick sort of hopefully.
The Christie parallel, I think is definitely an earned one, and the Cooper's Chase marble vibes giving way to a more Poirot kind of template for this one in terms of where you can go and how you can make a play. I'm interested in your description of loving a particular kind of airport thriller. I can't remember the last time I read something in that genre that brought such ineffable englishness to it.
Yeah, listen, Michael, that's all I have as an author. When you sit down, what is it that you have? You know, of course you can think of plots. Of course you can have ideas, and of course you can have different characters. But everything comes from inside you. And you know, I can't help but to come from some wit and some humor and seeing the ridiculousness of life. But I love these big, bold thrillery type things as well. And so it wasn't deliberately me thinking oh this would
be funny, you know, combining the two of those. It's me thinking, well, I want to write that, But I can't write it in any other way than the way I write. You know, my fingers are on the keys of the keyboard, and you know they don't do what I tell them. They do what they want to do, and that is to entertain and to see how funny and ridiculous the world is, and hopefully make you cry a little bit as well, and talk about love. But you know, I can't help but write that way.
Those fingers type the word twigs without you even controlling.
Them, exactly that. Weirdly, every time I do you start a new book or a new something, I think, or maybe I wonder if this is the one where actually I find that I'm going to be very very serious this time, and I'm going to write a proper kind of you know book, a prize winning six hundred page novel. And as you say, within three pages, I'm writing about twixes and you know, sausage rolls, and I think, oh no, listen,
it's going to be more of the same. But just my note to myself is always make it brilliant, maybe as great as you can do. Make it something you're proud of.
Look, the only thing you're pointing to there is a short sightedness of Book of Judges, and one day twigs and sausage rolls will be what they're looking for. I have no doubt. There is a scene in the fourth Thursday Murder Book where it's Christmas and their unwrapping presents for each other, and it's a page of almost pure dialogue without reference to who's speaking at any given point,
because you simply don't need it. The characters are so well formed at this point, you know them so well that through what they say, they are unmistakable at all times. I'm interested that you turned your attention, you turn your labors to the novel rather than to TV, which you know so well in a kind of dramatic or comedic sense.
Yeah, I think because you can be inside people's head spar more. And so I love writing dialogue. I mean it's a joy. And so yeah, you would naturally think, well, that would lead on to screenplays and what have you, and you know that sort of thing is fun. But
I love writing dialogue. But then I like going inside someone's head, and I like hearing the stuff that they haven't said, or hearing their misunderstanding of what it is that they have said, or just that stuff where you know, for when anytime you have a conversation with people, there's lots of stuff that isn't being said, which is as interesting as what is being said. And in a novel
you can just do that. And also you can go into different people's heads, in different people's characters, you can write in different voices, and I love to do that. So for me, yes, naturally my skill set should be screenplays and stuff like that. But actually, weirdly, the second I started writing books in other people's voices, I was like, oh,
this is I love this. I love exploring, you know, someone's you know, internal monologue and seeing what drives them because you know, all day, every day we meet people and we don't know what's just happened to them. We don't know where they've just come from. We don't know, you know, a terrible thing that's just befallen them. We
don't know what their childhood was like. But in novels you can find that out and you can get to know people you know more and more and more, and as you say, by the fourth Thursday Murder Club, you know, these people are so real to me and I think also to the readers, and that's something you can't do quite quite as well as a screenplay.
I don't think the other thing by that fourth book is a bit what you're describing happened to you with Rosie. I mean, I do think about that as a peculiarly Richard Osman problem is you have characters walk on clearly for the purpose of one scene or one function in the context of the plot, and suddenly two books later, three books later, they're part of your cast of characters. You are and I say this with admiration and affection,
but you are very bad at letting characters go. Like once they come on, you're like, oh no, they're back, and I need to have my universe expand.
Yeah, it's exactly right. And you know, it's funny because with Thursday Murder Club again, the bog Down is a character from that, and he was a very very bit part very early on, and yet by the fourth Thursday Murder Club it's snowballs and you've got all these characters you've sort of turned up. I cannot have a new character come into a book and be a cipher or someone boring. I can't. I just it just doesn't interest me.
I always say, my wife is an actor. And I always just think if you were to have a small part in this film, and it was this part of this character in this scene that I want you to go, oh my god, this character is great. You know. I hate that thing of someone's a shopkeeper or someone's you know, a delivery driver or someone anything like that. Yeah, if the second you give anybody a hinterland, then you can
write about them again. And if you do want to write a series, there's in this book there's a border Patroyal border security guy in America at a private airport called Carlos Moss. And I just again, so here's the way of the sort of writing process I think. I know, when you go to America is terrifying to go through customs, right because the guys and the women who do bardup patrol in America do not want you to be there.
You feel terrible, You feel like a criminal. So I thought, great, I'm going to write a scene with Steve, who does not want to become into America in the first place, has to go past a border security guy and need something. So I thought, oh, that's I can see where humor comes. But the second Carlos Moss starts talking to Steve, I'm like, oh my god, you're great. I love you. You're far more than just this border security guy is going to
be trouble. And he's a perfect example of someone where you think, Okay, you're only to be here as a comic four for one scene. But I loved what you said so much and the way you said it. There's no way I'm not going to bring you back in the next book. I guess, of course you're going to come back because I love who you are, so yeah, I do. I store trouble up for myself by falling in love with characters.
I'm curious that addiction to kind of making no character a bit part. Did that come back to bite you with the adaptation for Thursday Murder Club. I know the film is shooting at the moment. Did they go, oh, no, we have to cut these extraneous characters because it's just too expensive.
It's just well, you know, it's just an entirely different skill set. You know. I've been around television and film long enough to know that they have to do their version. They've got to make like a two hour version of this book, which, if you really did everything would be seven and a half hours something like that, maybe they have to make something entirely different, which they are absolutely doing,
and I am staying out of it. I go along to set, and that's really good fun and everyone's lovely to me, and I love all that. But I said to them from the beginning, I'm not going to interfere, and I think they didn't believe me, because I'm sure all authors say that, But actually, I'm not going to interfere because it's really hard to write a book, and if I had fifteen people telling me every five minutes how to do it, I wouldn't be able to do it.
And it's really hard to make a film, and it's not fair on them for me to say, yeah, but I would do it this way. You think, yeah, but you're not doing it. You know someone else is doing it, so it's it's sort of nice to kind of let somebody else get on with it and we still see what happens with it. But yeah, you either do it all yourself or you do none of it yourself. I think with a.
Film, I can't remember and I haven't done sufficient research to go and kind of cross check this. But you know, they're pretty starry actors who are being cast in the adaptation, and I'm curious. It seems likely to me that Joyce would have had views on Pierce Brosnan, for example, at some point in the books.
Surely, well, it's fascinating. So I was down on the set the other day and Pierce is there, and he is the most handsome man in the world, you know. I mean, he's insanely handsome, and bless him. He dresses down for Ron, but you know, he's still Pierce. Pro wasn't and I was talking to him about it. I said, I said, firstly, Piss Posson is an unbelievably great comic actor, which I think people forget. But I said to Pierce,
I said, here's the absolute key to your casting. I said, you are who Ron would have chosen to play himself. So yeah, it's I see it purely as icing. You know, it's and we'll see what happens.
I am extremely excited for the screen adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club and with whatever Richard writes next. His latest book is called We Solve Murders and it's widely available now. Before we go, you might have seen this week the announcement of the twenty twenty four Booker Prize shortlist. It's a terrific list of six titles. Some of my favorite books in the past twelve months are there, but the notable inclusion for local readers is Charlotte Wood's Stoneyard Devotional.
It's an absolutely exquisite novel and it's so exciting to see it there on the list. It's the first time an Australian's been shortlisted for the book as since Richard Flanagan ten years ago when he went on to win for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. So I recommend you read Stoneyard Devotional and once you're done, go to the Read This archive and find the episode with Charlotte discussing the book. It's a beautiful conversation and we
are super excited for her. You can find it all the rest of the shortlist and the books of Richard Osman at your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends, rate and review us. It helps a lot, and we're only a few ratings shy of three hundred on the Apple podcast app, so help tip us over the edge this week. That'd be fun next week. I read this.
I'm joined by Ruman Alam, author of the award winning novel Lave the World Behind, and he's talking about the genesis of his newest book, Entitlement.
A long time ago, my husband said to me about a friend of ours. She's kind of like a chronically single woman at a time approaching mid life, and he said, you know, I think at a certain point, you should be allowed to marry yourself and throw a big party and everyone has to give you a gift and sort of treat it the same way that they would treat it if you were getting married to another person. A not cruel joke, but kind of like a funny observation,
and that really stayed with me. I remembered that moment, and at some point I had this idea about a woman choosing to marry an apartment.
Read This is produced and edited by Clara Ames. The show was mixed by Travis Evans with original compositions by Zelton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See you next week. Four