Richard Osman introduces the characters in his new book, We Solve Murders

Virgin Radio

12 Sep 2024, 11:51

Richard Osman joined The Chris Evans Breakfast Show to turn the pages of his brand new novel, and to tell us all about the characters within. 

We Solve Murders is out today (12th September), and sees Amy Wheeler working as a private security officer on a remote island. A dead body, a bag of money and a killer with their sights on her cause her to send an SOS to the only person she trusts, her father-in-law Steve.

“The murder-mystery itself is fairly simple,” Richard said when he joined The Chris Evans Breakfast Show. “But for me, these books are all about characters. It's always about characters and having fun with people and making people laugh and all that kind of stuff.” 

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This is the first book in a brand new series from Richard, following the massive success of ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ series. The author said: “Whenever I introduce a minor character, I think, ‘Well, I’ll just have them in for this scene,’ and then I could sort of fall in love with them because they say something that really entertains me, and then suddenly the book is full of these people. And then you've got to do another book, and you've got to bring them all back!” 

He added: “Thursday Murder Club, which is coming back next year, by the fourth one, there's about 40 characters where I think ‘Oh, I really like you. You've got to come back.’ And now I'm giving myself the same problem with We Solve Murders!”

Revealing some details about the main characters in the book, Richard said: “Amy is a bodyguard for billionaires, and she is looking after a woman called Rosie D’antonio, who is the world's best selling author, if you don't count Lee Child, and she's a real sort of Jackie Collins type. And she wasn't really supposed to be a main character in this book, but Amy was just chatting to her in an early scene, I was just writing away, and she just said a few things about Jack Nicholson and mojitos and stuff. And I just thought, ‘Okay, you've got to stick around.’ So, she became the, kind of, third detective in this book.

Speaking about the other protagonist, Richard explained: “Amy gets in trouble. Someone is trying to frame her and trying to kill her, and she thinks, ‘Well, who do I trust in the world to come and help me?’ And there's only one man she can trust. So way back at home in the New Forest is a man called Steve Wheeler, who is her father-in-law. 

“He's an ex-cop. He's a widower. His life is getting smaller, and he likes it. He likes to be in his village. He likes to do the pub quiz. He likes to hang out with his cat and his mates. He does not want to fly around the world, but he has to because Amy is in trouble. So he's on a private jet within 24 hours, discovers they don't do Scotch eggs, is absolutely horrified about this. And then suddenly we've got these three of them, Amy, Steve and Rosie, trying to outrun a murderer, trying to catch a murderer, and a big, sort of round-the-world murder mystery caper.”

And then there’s Adam. “Adam is the husband of Amy and the son of Steve, and like very, very often with father-in-laws and daughters-in-laws, Adam has no emotional relationship with his father, so it all comes through his wife,” the writer revealed. “Adam and Steve, they're a gentleman of a certain class at a certain age, and they don't talk through their feelings. And so Amy, slightly kind of acts as a conduit between the two of them. And he's out in the Far East doing some financial thing that no one could understand.”

Richard told Chris: “You have the idea in the head, which at the start was just father-in-law, daughter-in-law, I just thought was an interesting dynamic. And then suddenly people start kind of circling around them, and then they stick to them. And Steve's best mate, Tony Taylor in the New Forest is a character I love, who spends his entire life talking about the directions between different places. And you get these people, you think, ‘Oh, you're going to come back and you're going to come back,’ and suddenly you've got a series that kind of runs and runs.

“It's really globetrotting, and it still has that very British heart and humour and all of that kind of stuff. But I just thought it's funny to put that in a world of private islands and private jets. So I had a lot of fun being in that world and having, especially having a guy, Steve, who does not want to be there. All he wants to do is go home. There's a point he turns up in South Carolina's blazing sunshine, and someone says, ‘You've got to put your sunglasses on.’ He goes, ‘ don't have sunglasses. I'm not a male model.’ And it's so lovely to take someone who's like me and put them in this world.”

Read what Richard had to say about the next instalment of The Thursday Murder Club later today at virginradio.co.uk.

We Solve Murders is out now. 

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.