We chat with author Richard Osman about We Solve Murders, which combines the heart and humour of The Thursday Murder Club with a puzzling international mystery.
WE SOLVE MURDERS is the first novel in a new mystery series, introducing the dynamic detective duo Steve and Amy Wheeler. What inspired you to write WE SOLVE MURDERS?
I was in a bookshop looking for something that’s a high stakes international thriller, but that also tells some truths about the world we live in now, and makes you laugh in the way that The Thursday Murder Club does. I couldn’t quite find one, so I thought I should write one myself. A sort of Thursday Murder Club meets The DaVinci Code, written by Lee Child. It changed a lot from that initial thought, but that’s where it all started!
Steve is retired from the police force, and thoroughly enjoying his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat. His daughter-in-law, Amy, thinks adrenaline is good for the soul and works as a private security officer for billionaires, traveling around the globe in search of her next adventure. How did you craft this mismatched duo?
Amy is the sort of person who wants to go everywhere and experience everything. To live every minute of every day, and always be on the move. You know the type! Whereas Steve, very much like me, just wants to stay safely at home and, very happily, do nothing. I think a lot of humor comes from pairing characters together who are very different, but who also really love each other, and that’s Amy and Steve.
When you take two people who want very different things from life, and then send a murderer after them, you’re always going to have fun!
One of the characters in WE SOLVE MURDERS is a bestselling author, Rosie D’Antonio. What was it like to write a writer? Did any of your own writing habits make it into the novel?
Rosie was only ever intended to be a minor character but kept barging in with her leopard skin and shoulder-pads, to become a major part of the novel. I describe her as the Jackie Collins of crime, having sold hundreds of millions of copies, and with a lifestyle that wouldn’t be out of place in one of her books. I’m afraid to say I don’t own a helicopter, or a private jet (Rosie has got ‘Eighties money’) but I like to think we have a similar sense of humor.
The cover art for WE SOLVE MURDERS harkens back to some of our classic thrillers of the 1970s and 1980s. Do you have any favorite reads from that time period? Are you paying homage to any of them in WE SOLVE MURDERS?
The cover designer, Richard Bravery, pulled an absolute blinder with the cover. My Mum would always have the big seventies and eighties airport blockbuster novels in the house, and the covers seemed so impossibly glamorous to me, so that was the design brief. Len Deighton, Arthur Hailey, Jackie Collins, but with a Thursday Murder Club twist. A cute cat sitting on a gun pretty much sums up my writing too!
The Thursday Murder Club has amassed an incredible following of dedicated readers since it debuted in 2020. Why did you decide now was the right time to launch a new series?
The Thursday Murder Club gang have had an extremely busy few years, and it felt right to let them have a few months off to rest and recuperate. The events of The Last Devil to Die were pretty momentous, and it felt the right time to give them a break and for me to come up with something new. And I really wanted to write a heroine who can jump out of planes and attack bad guys, in a way I don’t think we’d see Joyce doing!
Our favorite senior sleuths will be back soon, though, in print and on the silver screen. What can you share about what’s next for The Thursday Murder Club?
I’ve just started writing the fifth Thursday Murder Club novel and it’s great to be back with the old gang: more murders, more mysteries, more lemon drizzle cake. Filming of The Thursday Murder Club film adaptation starts Summer 2024 and we’ve got a great cast, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Sir Ben Kingsley, just incredible. I think Ron would be delighted to know that he’s being played by James Bond.
