Where to Start with Richard Osman: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Richard Osman — whether to begin with The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, or The Bullet That Missed. A complete reading guide.
Richard Osman (born 1970) is the British television presenter, producer, and author who — with The Thursday Murder Club (2020) — produced the fastest-selling adult fiction debut in British publishing history, and the biggest-selling adult debut in British history since records began. The Thursday Murder Club series follows four retirees at a Kent retirement village who solve (or attempt to solve) murders; the books combine classic cosy mystery plotting with genuinely warm characterisation and an emotional honesty about ageing, loss, and friendship that distinguishes them from most crime fiction. Osman is best known as a television personality (Pointless, House of Games); the novels have introduced him to a vastly larger international readership.
Where to Start: The Thursday Murder Club (2020)
The essential Osman — and one of the most charming debut crime novels of the decade. At Coopers Chase, a luxury retirement village in the Kent countryside, a group of retirees meets every Thursday to examine unsolved murders. Elizabeth Best (former intelligence), Joyce Meadowcroft (former nurse), Ibrahim Arif (former psychiatrist), and Ron Ritchie (former trade unionist) have been meeting for months when a real murder lands on their doorstep: the village’s property developer is found dead, and the investigation threatens to expose secrets that various residents would prefer buried.
The local detectives, Chris and Donna, find themselves working alongside four septuagenarians whose combined expertise in intelligence, psychology, medicine, and working-class politics makes them unexpectedly formidable. The relationship between the professionals and the amateurs is one of the novel’s warm cores.
Osman writes with genuine love for his characters. The specific pleasures and sorrows of life in a retirement village — the morning exercises, the coffee mornings, the slow losses as friends die — are rendered with affection and honesty. Joyce’s diary entries are among the funniest and most touching narrative devices in recent British fiction. The mystery itself is well-constructed; the solution is fair and surprising.
The Man Who Died Twice (2021)
The second novel — introducing a new investigation that connects to Elizabeth’s intelligence past and deepens the character dynamics established in the first book. Slightly more thriller-paced than The Thursday Murder Club; Elizabeth’s backstory begins to emerge in ways that complicate the warmth of the first novel. A strong continuation.
The Bullet That Missed (2022)
The third novel — combining a cold case (a television presenter who died under suspicious circumstances fifteen years ago) with a new threat to one of the four friends. The most emotionally significant of the series; Osman develops the characters’ specific vulnerabilities with greater depth than the earlier books. Some readers consider this the best of the series.
The Last Devil to Die (2023)
The fourth novel — involving an art dealer, a missing package of heroin, and deaths that threaten to reach too close to the Club. The most thriller-like in structure; the emotional content relating to ageing and loss reaches its full expression here.
Reading Richard Osman
Begin with The Thursday Murder Club and read the series in order — the character development is cumulative and the later books are richer for knowing the characters from the beginning. The series is ongoing; each novel is complete in itself but the full emotional arc requires the sequence. The books are best read as character studies that happen to contain mysteries, rather than mysteries that happen to contain characters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Richard Osman?
The Thursday Murder Club (2020) is the only starting point — the first novel in Osman's series following four retirees at a luxury retirement village in Kent who meet every Thursday to investigate cold cases, and who find themselves involved in a live murder investigation when a body turns up on their doorstep. The novel became one of the fastest-selling debut crime novels in British publishing history; it is warm, funny, and surprisingly well-plotted, with characters — particularly the formidable Joyce, the former spy Elizabeth, and the ex-trade unionist Ron — who became immediately beloved.
Who are the Thursday Murder Club?
The Thursday Murder Club is a group of four retirees living at Coopers Chase, a luxury retirement village in the Kent countryside. Elizabeth Best, a former intelligence officer, is the group's strategist and the character with the most significant secrets; Joyce Meadowcroft, a former nurse, narrates through her diary and provides the emotional warmth; Ibrahim Arif, a retired psychiatrist, provides psychological analysis; and Ron Ritchie, a former trade union leader, provides muscle and political history. The four are brilliantly differentiated; their friendships — and the specific pleasures and losses of their stage of life — are as important to the novels as the mysteries.
Are Richard Osman's books cosy mysteries?
The Thursday Murder Club books are often classified as cosy mysteries — a genre characterised by amateur detectives, community settings, and an absence of graphic violence or explicit content — but they are somewhat darker and more emotionally complex than the standard cosy mystery formula suggests. The deaths are real and sometimes affecting; the backstories of the main characters (particularly Elizabeth's intelligence history) involve genuine moral complexity; and Osman writes about ageing, loss, and the specific grief of the later years with unusual directness. The tone is warm and funny, but the emotional content is richer than most cosy mysteries attempt.
Does the Thursday Murder Club series need to be read in order?
The Thursday Murder Club series is best read in order — the characters develop significantly across the four books, and relationships and backstories established in earlier novels are referenced and built upon in later ones. The mysteries in each book are self-contained and could be followed without the prior context, but the emotional resonance of later books depends significantly on knowing the characters from the earlier novels. Begin with The Thursday Murder Club and read in order.
