Five minutes with… bestselling author and presenter Richard Osman
The cosy crime king talks about the possibilities of bringing his new series of novels to the screen
He’s been rubbing shoulders with Dame Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Sir Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie on the set of the movie adaptation of his 2020 novel The Thursday Murder Club – and Richard Osman is now hoping to bring his new book series to the screen.
The bestselling author, TV presenter and producer has written We Solve Murders, the first in the new series introducing ex-cop Steve Wheeler and his daughter-in-law Amy, a private security officer, who join forces to chase a money-smuggling kingpin and associated assassins, who are bumping off social media influencers acting as couriers for his business.
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The book also features a “Jackie Collins-esque” character in the fictional Rosie D’Antonio, a glamorous world-famous novelist with a lust for excitement and more than a hint of mischief, who has been targeted by a Russian oligarch who’s not taken kindly to being featured in one of her novels.
It’s a cat-and-mouse game that takes them around the world, as Amy, who has been put in charge of protecting Rosie, also finds herself the target of a killer.
“It was supposed to be a duo, but I came up with Rosie and thought, oh that’s fun, Jackie Collins-esque. I love Rosie so much, she’s so full of mischief, always got a Martini in her hand and a real back story of Hollywood and success. So it has turned from a two-hander to a three-hander. So she is coming back,” says Osman.
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He says he didn’t base Rosie on the late, great, real blockbuster author Jackie Collins, though. “You always have a little starting point. You could have a Jackie Collins-like character, but that character then reveals themselves to you and becomes a very different person. I never base [my characters] on anyone in the real world.”
Osman, 53, whose four novels in The Thursday Murder Club series have sold 10 million copies globally, says he can definitely see the new series of books being adapted for screen – and that a deal is in the works but he cannot reveal details at this stage.
“As a series, it would be a lot of fun. The whole idea is that they are detectives, so there’s more scope for what they can do. I think we’ll definitely be doing a screen adaptation. I think it’s more likely to be TV, but then everything’s TV these days.”
As well as his writing career (he gave up co-presenting Pointless in 2022 to devote more time to his books), he presents the BBC Two quiz show Richard Osman’s House Of Games and co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is Entertainment with Marina Hyde. He lives with his wife, Ingrid Oliver, in west London, where he writes his blockbuster novels.
How involved are you in The Thursday Murder Club movie?
“I’m not really anything to do with that. It’s lovely and they invite me on set and I’m so thrilled and incredibly excited, but I haven’t written it, I don’t have to get involved in it at all. I’ve given it to brilliant people and, like everyone else, I’m incredibly excited to see what they come up with, so it’s not taking up a lot of my time.”
But you are executive producer?
“Yeah, but I’ve worked in television long enough to know that executive producer can mean many things. I tell you now, I’m not turning up at the office at nine in the morning and leaving at five for my executive producer credit.”
What was it like meeting the cast on set?
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“It’s very funny, it’s very peculiar. I love being on set and they all have little golf carts and stuff like that and it’s all very Hollywood, but I’m aware I’m taking a holiday in that world and they are doing the hard work.”
Why did you decide to write a new series?
“I’ve hopefully got another 20 or 30 years of writing books and at some point you have to introduce people to a new world and new characters. I love that first quartet of The Thursday Murder Club books, but I felt they probably needed a year off.
“It was time to find new people and a book that is a bit more globetrotting, where there’s more gunfire and helicopters than there might be in The Thursday Murder Club.
How different did it feel from writing The Thursday Murder Club?
“Not massively because my brain is the same and my natural instincts as a writer are the same. If people love The Thursday Murder Club, they will love this book as well because that British sensibility, the wit and the warmth is all there, but it’s lovely to put that on a different canvas.”
Have you visited the locations – St Lucia, South Carolina, Dubai and Dublin – that you write about in We Solve Murders?
“Yes. I don’t love doing research, so I thought I could just write about places I’ve already been, so I did that. I needed them to go somewhere exotic and I’d been to St Lucia a couple of years ago, which I love, so I wrote about it.”
Have you ever imagined which actors would play the characters?
“No. I can’t imagine anyone playing any character. That’s not the way my brain works at all. I never write thinking about what this is going to be on screen one day, or that an actor could do this. I like to be inside the characters’ heads and I like to think of them as very real.
“It’s a lot of fun when people talk about casting, but when you’re writing, it’s impossible. When I write, I just go upstairs, shut the door, and Liesl the cat sits on my lap.”
Do you deliberately avoid graphic violence and sex in your novels?
“That stuff doesn’t interest me. I’m fascinated by evil and I’m fascinated by the violence that people do and the underworld, and the things that we don’t see in what goes on behind the doors in ordinary streets.
“I’m fascinated about the world we’re living in culturally – we’re constantly told that we hate each other, that no-one can ever agree on anything – but I really believe in the power of kind, strong people and in the power of empathy. That’s at the heart of all my books.”
How many more novels are you writing?
“I’m doing a couple more Thursday Murder Clubs for sure, and definitely another one of these. But that’s a question for the readers and whether they want more of them.”
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman is published by Viking, priced £22. Available now.
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