“We Solve Murders” is
highly entertaining and cannot be recommended enough. (Review by Barry Meehan for artSMart)
Richard Osman is definitely my favourite author of the moment. His fluid writing style, along with his tongue-in-cheek humour, had me hooked when I was presented with his debut novel to review.
This was The Thursday Murder
Club, the first in a series of four books, the others that followed quickly
being The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet
that Missed and The Last Devil to Die, all about four
retired friends in a remote village in England who get together to investigate
cold cases of robbery and murder.
If you haven’t read them, I would strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of each soon. And, as a by the by, The Thursday Murder Club is currently being made into a movie starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, David Tennant, Richard E Grant and Johnathan Pryce, to name a few members of what would appear to be an illustrious cast. Don’t miss it when it hits Netflix!
In case the name Richard Osman is foreign to you, he is a six-foot-seven inch giant of a man who is a regular guest on BBC comedy panel shows such as QI and Would I Lie To You, as well as being the very entertaining information guru on Pointless.
And so, on to We Solve Murders. Much as it would have been expected to carry on the shenanigans of the Thursday Murder Club, this is an entirely new series, where solving murders is a family business. Amy Wheeler is a private security company employee, who loves her job. And who wouldn’t, as her client protection skills take her to all corners of the world, in first class all the way. Her current assignment is a relatively simple one on a private island off South Carolina, serving as 24/7 protection for best-selling erotic novelist Rosie D’Antonio, whose life is being threatened by a Russian oligarch.
Much as there is danger afoot, there is worse to come as Amy finds herself being framed at the top of a suspect list for a series of murders of former clients. Her boss disappears, and is presumed dead, so she can’t turn to him for help, but who else can she trust to investigate and find the real killer?
There is only one person who she can trust implicitly – her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, a retired policeman who keeps his hand in by investigating petty crime in the quiet, leafy English village he has singled out as a retirement destination – missing cats and dogs, money disappearing from a local shop etc. There is also his favourite pub that keeps him in the village, with its regular pub quiz nights and the small circle of his local mates. Can Amy convince him to join her in a madcap, adrenaline-fuelled whirlwind of adventure which will take them around the world in the hope that they will stay at least one step ahead of a dangerous enemy? There’s only one way to find out!
We Solve Murders is highly entertaining and cannot be recommended enough. – Barry Meehan.
We Solve Murders is published by Penguin Random House UK: ISBN 978-0-241-60837-1