It was Richard Osman’s maiden trip to India and certainly not the last. With an impressive height of 6’7” and a remarkable career as a TV presenter in the UK, Osman made his way through a densely-crowded venue in the early hours of Day 3 of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Series Jaipur Literature Festival at Clarks Amer in Jaipur, and witnessed what he has only heard and read about India.
“I’m 53 and it’s my first time in India. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” he started off in a heavy British accent before comparing the vibe to the streets of New York and London.
“Coming to India is like when you go to New York for the first time. You’re in the middle of it, and it’s incredibly familiar to you already because you’ve seen it on television and films so many times. It’s the same in India. You’ve seen on television and film this incredibly vibrant culture and the colours and the noise and, funnily enough, you’ve been preparing for it your whole life just by reading and watching,” said Osman, visualising the literary festival’s venue as the perfect spot for a murder.
He continued: “London is in some ways like India. It’s just so busy and noisy and there are so many people. We’ve only been to Delhi and Jaipur and you get a sense of the scale of the country and the enormous number of people everywhere. We know we’re getting a small picture of it but it’s been lovely to be in amongst it and amongst the Indian people,” said Osman, who started exploring the fiction genre in 2020 with his crime thrillers after writing a dozen non-fiction books.
Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series occupies prominent space in the racks and has thriller and murder mystery enthusiasts across the globe on their toes. We sat down with Osman for a quick chat to discuss the latest book in the series, The Last Devil To Die, channelising the ‘invisible and experienced’ with a sleuth’s hat and more. Excerpts from the engaging interview.
You have been in the show business for two decades with some of the most popular shows on BBC. What got you into writing, particularly crime thrillers?
That’s my favourite genre to read. When I worked for television, I always made the type of programmes I would like to watch because then you’re not fooling anybody. I sort of understand what it is about crime thrillers that people like because it’s just inside me. So, I’m never having to sort of worry about, ‘Oh, where should I go next?’, ‘How should this work?’ because I just had years and years of reading Agatha Christie and lots of modern writers. You sort of know roughly where you can go.
So, I just, I always try and make sure I write what I would read. It seems to have worked so far. I couldn’t go and write a sprawling four-generation historical epic because it’s not in me, whereas a few good murders and a few good jokes — that I can do.
To add, my grandfather was a police officer in Brighton, a town on the English coast, and he would always talk to me about what he was doing, he’d take me around the town, walk me through the streets and tell me what was going on in certain houses. So, I was always fascinated with crime and the fact that it goes on around us all the time. I always fancied being a police officer myself, but I’ve done the second best thing, which is write about crime rather than solve it myself.
You are discovering a new readership in India. How has the response been so far?
I write about an overlooked generation, people in their late 70s and early 80s who feel they’ve become invisible and people forget about them. In my books, they become heroes. And I thought there would be certain cultures, including Indian culture, that would resonate with it as traditionally there’s huge respect for the elders and the big extended families.
In fact, everywhere I go, every country says, oh, no, that’s, that’s the same as us. When we get to that age bracket, we become invisible and that’s why I think that it’s done well across the world because everyone can see that the talents of that generation are being wasted.
Tell us about The Thursday Murder Club, how it all started and now you have the fourth book.
Well, my mum lives in a retirement community in Sussex, which is in the south of England, just 20 miles south of London. It’s a very beautiful place, quintessentially English and, whenever I was there, I would think this could be an amazing setting for an Agatha Christie murder because it looks so peaceful and genteel, which is where all of her murders are set.
And then I would find the people who were there, all over 75, drinking and laughing and having such an interesting time. They’d done these extraordinary things like ran big businesses, been judges and travelled everywhere in the world and I thought, well, if there was a murder here, then I bet you lot would solve it.
And that’s where The Thursday Murder Club began, which is four older people with very different skills, very different experiences from each other get together and solve murder mysteries.
The concept of old, retired and curious people solving murders reminds me of the OTT series Only Murders in the Building.
Yes, which I love. It’s that idea that whatever age you are, you’re allowed to have a bit of mischief. You’re allowed to be naughty. So, I think people respond to that.
Your book has that flavour of British wit and humour. Was it intentional and a significant factor for your thriller?
I’ve always written comedy. So, it has always been my world. But when I started writing the book, I told myself, don’t put any jokes in this book as I think jokes sometimes get in the way of thrillers because they take you outside of the story a little bit sometimes.
I created these four characters who are so different to each other and have such a funny take on the world that actually they do the jokes. So, as a writer, I’m not putting any jokes in there, but the characters are saying things that are making people laugh.
Looking back, from a TV presenter to an author, how has the journey been?
Well, I was always a writer and behind the scenes in TV and then I completely by accident became a television presenter. And after about 15 years of that, I thought I needed to get back to the thing that I love and the thing that I’m best at. For me, it’s all about the audience and how you keep people hooked. On television, it’s how you stop people turning over to the other channel and, in books, it’s about how you stop people putting the book down and picking up another book. So, the skill is the same — hook people in.
However, these are two different things and two different challenges. I mean, presenting television is much easier because it’s quick and visually you are attracting people’s attention whereas a book is years and years of hard work. If I’m on TV and I say something funny the audience immediately hears it and reacts but in a book it takes another year before anyone ever reads it, which is peculiar. I think that everything I learned in TV, I can use in books, but it’s just a much longer, harder, more interesting and more exciting process.
We hear that The Thursday Murder Club will be adapted for the screen soon. Is that right?
Yes, Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to the film and we will start filming this August, or this summer. He bought the rights before the books even came out.
Will there be a fifth book in the series or are you going to start a new series?
There will be a couple more books in the series but I’m starting a new series this year as well. So, there’ll be crime thrillers for many years to come.
Osman’s been quite prolific since he started writing in 2020 and followed up his debut novel with three more murder mysteries — The Man Who Died Twice, The Last ‘Devil’ to Die and The Bullet That Missed