There’s no mystery about Osman’s excellence
Have you been feeling that it’s high time someone did a takedown of Richard Osman, a TV star who has also become phenomenally successful in the publishing world? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but that’s not going to happen here.
The Last Devil to Die is the fourth in Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, and it is even better than the previous instalments. All have been monster bestsellers, record-breakers, and this one will join them, and it is wholly and entirely deserved. There, I’ve said it.
For the uninitiated, Osman’s aging sleuths – steely ex spymaster Elizabeth, crafty former nurse Joyce, mouthy ex-union activist Ron and softly-spoken psychiatrist Ibrahim – are all residents of Kent retirement village Cooper’s Chase.
They are faced here with another murder – this time of a friend who featured in the previous book, The Bullet That Missed.
The murder is linked to a lost stash of heroin: a lot of people are angry, desperate to recover the goods, and careless about anyone who might be killed along the way.
The justification for the group getting involved in solving crimes is always sketchy, but that’s fair enough. Why waste time explaining it? Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim will be better than the police – even than their chums in the force, Chris and Donna.
They also have endless resources at their fingertips and an ever-expanding circle of useful associates (this time a computer expert has joined the handyman, KGB man and imprisoned drug dealer who already help them out).
They just need to make a call or ask the right person. This may be unrealistic but it makes for a fascinating investigation – and because it is done with great good humour, we are willing to suspend our disbelief.
The really picky might say that there aren’t enough of Joyce’s interspersed first-person narratives this time – her (often unintentionally) hilarious updates on the case are the highlight, always, for the discerning Osman fan.
But Osman certainly has a remarkable ability to write a narrative with multiple points of view.
As usual, his dialogue is pin-sharp – each person is distinct and has their own voice, and none of them, amazingly, resembles the author himself in the slightest.
The series’ dementia storyline – Elizabeth’s husband Stephen is gradually deteriorating due to the condition – also continues in this book, and honestly if you served up this plotline alone as a novella, it would be seen as literary fiction of the highest order.
It is moving and beautiful and has the feeling of something real and lived. But Osman deftly manages the shifts in tone between seriousness and comedy: it is not at all jarring when he moves back on to the amateur detection and the jokes.
Over the four books, the plotting has got tighter and sharper, with fewer distractions and – as in the best book series – the funniest lines and best developments all hit home because we know the characters so well.
Crime fans are suspicious and untrusting with celebrity entries in the genre: it takes a lot of talent and knowledge to write good crime fiction, and most incomers can’t do it. But Osman has, uniquely, won his place in the hall of fame fair and square and his crime writing is up there with the very best.