We Solve Murders (2024) By Richard Osman

"It’s not every daughter-in-law who will high-five you when you’ve shot a drug dealer in a Coldplay T-shirt, is it?"

The last few years has seen television presenter Richard Osman produce an excellent and widely popular series of books known as 'The Thursday Murder Club' series. After four books, however, Osman decided to write something new, which, as an avid enjoyer of those aforementioned books, intrigued me greatly.

"No regrets. We live our lives forwards, not backwards. So always make the best of what's in front of you."

Unfortunately, this book took me a little longer to get into than Osman's other books. I think, ultimately, I just did not enjoy the characters as much as those in Osman's other series, though that is not to say that they were unlikeable. On the contrary, some of them were very fun and interesting, but there were others who didn't quite have the personality of those I've enjoyed in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

"If you have any sort of personality, someone will eventually want to kill you."

Once I got into the flow of the story, albeit after a little longer than usual, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. Osman always creates and uses a variety of characters, locations, and events, to spread his story across. His stories never feel small, which is very enjoyable, particularly considering his highlighting of seemingly unspectacular or normal protagonists.

"There are friendships forged in fire, which end up disappearing like smoke, and other casual, nodding friendships, which will stay with you for the rest of your life."

What this book did very well, much like those other books, was provide an exciting and wide-reaching mystery for the reader to delve into. Full disclosure, I did predict the reveals a good few chapters before they were unveiled. That said, I didn't mind too much, because it was still fun to see how Osman and his characters got there.

"Every criminal wants to tell the truth eventually. Enough of the truth to be seen but not enough of the truth to be convicted."

Overall, despite its shortcomings, I still found myself enjoying this silly little murder mystery quite a bit. There was certainly the familiar heart that has made Osman's fiction so wonderful. I certainly think that, should the author choose to write more stories with these characters, the series will only improve. I would absolutely be willing to read a second book, by all means.

"Everyone is vulnerable. For some people, for Steve, it comes out as fear, avoiding situations where the vulnerability is exposed. For others, for an awful lot of people these days, vulnerability comes out as anger, pushing away anything that feels like it might pierce their shell."