Richard Osman scores again with joyous second novel

Back in February, I wrote that I’d just read Richard Osman’s debut novel, The Thursday Murder Club, and really enjoyed it, noting that it had surpassed my expectations.

So much so, indeed, that I pre-ordered the Waterstones exclusive signed edition of the second book. Which landed on the doormat a week ago yesterday and which I finished at the weekend.

As it happens, having been reminded that the second book was due, I’d re-read the first – and I believe it’s unique for me to read a book twice within a year, if not for school purposes.

Returning to it though, even after such a short time, saw me laughing. Again. And crying. Again.

And with The Man Who Died Twice, it was a similar experience.

We return to meet once more in the jigsaw room (very shortly after the first book) a group of pensioner friends living in a luxury retirement village: former intelligence agent Elizabeth, former trade union leader and firebrand Ron, former nurse Joyce and not-entirely former psychiatrist Ibrahim.

All are members of an informal club at the village that pores over cold murder cases. Except when the cases in question are not very cold at all.

Stephen Spielberg has bought the rights to both the first two novels – and a third. Apparently, Osman himself gets told in the street about casting options. There’s a popular vote for Helen Mirren to play Elizabeth, apparently ... and to be frank, I wouldn’t disagree.

I also rather like the idea of Judi Dench as Joyce. The Great Gambon would be perfect as Ron and maybe Art Malik as Ibrahim?

The books are good enough to demand such talents.

Oh ... but this book, now.

This time, one of Elizabeth’s exes appeals to her for help after getting in trouble with the secret service and, worse yet, the mafia.

Did he really steal some diamonds ...or not? And if he did, where are they?

As with the first instalment, it’s often laugh-out-loud funny, but also makes you cry in places, because the characters are believable and, while flawed, you care about them.

There is moral complexity – and the characters themselves are also complex, never ducking thoughts of impending mortality or the dreadful toll of dementia. The author never lets such threads dominate his story, but they are present and dealt with gently and respectfully.

This is a brilliant second take from Osman and I heartily recommend it – and bear in mind that that comes from a crime fic fan who worships Chandler, Simenon and Mankell. It is no mean praise at all.

I can hardly wait for the third instalment – as I can hardly was it to spend more time with Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron.

The first book reviewed

Cosy? There's more to Richard Osman's debut than that

The creator and co-host of TV quiz show Pointless, and eponymous host of Richard Osman’s House of Games, has been busy with a little sideline: he’s written a first novel and it’s a crime caper.

 

The Thursday Murder Club came out last autumn and hit the best-seller lists in style – Steven Spielberg ha already bought the film rights (cast it right!).

 

I admit that I considered buying it then – having an extremely squishy soft spot for quality crime fiction – but didn’t, on the basis that, while I didn’t think it would be rubbish, my expectations otherwise were quite low.

 

Thankfully, a late review convinced me otherwise: I have just turned the final page and I can hardly wait for the sequel. 

 

A group of pensioners – former intelligence agent Elizabeth, former trade union leader and firebrand Ron, former nurse Joyce and not-entirely former psychiatrist Ibrahim – are members of an informal club at the village that pours over cold murder cases.

 

But when a builder and a property developer are murdered, they decide to get in on the real thing.

 

Now, I like quizzes and puzzles – and I’m not bad at them – but House of Games is, to me, like a cryptic crossword: on a level that I find entirely befuddling. I struggle so badly that, if I do get something right, it’s nearly followed by a lap of celebration around our tiny living room.

 

While not actually cryptic, The Thursday Murder Club is not obvious: Osman leads the reader a very clever dance that will have you in the dark until the end. Perhaps this is the ultimate way of creating a puzzle?

 

A Guardian review in October described the book as: “an amiable if undemanding cosy caper”. It’s “cosy”, certainly, but that damns it with faint praise.

 

What makes this special is Osman’s clear gift for creating believable and sympathetic characters. The central quartet are all wonderfully drawn – and not least, in terms of their dealing with age, their own impending mortality and indeed, their fear of, or dealing with, the dread of dementia.

 

And because Osman clearly care for his creations, the reader does too.

 

It’s very, very funny in places. I laughed out loud more than once and chuckled frequently: there’s a very English, gentle humour at play here … but also, à la the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, I cried too. More than once. It’s morally complex if you care to consider. But beyond that, you care for these characters.

 

There’s a second novel on course, apparently – as well as the movie. But do read – it’s a joy in so many ways.

Knives Out is a razor-sharp whodunnit with laughs

It’s nearing Christmas and as we head to the shortest day, what could be more comforting than a good story? And among the most appropriate tales for long, dark nights, then a good whodunnit must rank pretty high.

So we have Knives Out from writer, producer and director Rian Johnson’s, a movie offering a very up-to-date take on the isolated country house murder story.

In literary terms, Agatha Christie was the boss of this genre. Her books might seem light, but that takes great skill.

Here, Johnson shows no less skill.

The family of successful crime novelist Harlan Thrombey gathers to celebrate his 85th birthday, but the next morning, he’s found dead, in an apparent suicide.

Or was it?

When his will is read, it emerges that, shortly before his death, the author had cut his entire family out in place of his young South American carer, Marta.

Step forward local police – together with “the last of the gentleman detectives,” Benoit Blanc, who’s been anonymously hired to find out what really happened – and we start to learn that quite a few of the family had motives for murder.

This is really very good filmmaking. It’s a twisty plot that produces surprises until the end, with an added layer of interest in the subtle commentary on attitudes among some of the entitled middle class in Trump’s America.

The script is excellent – not least in Blanc’s overly verbose, drawling, southern character, including an hilarious diversion on doughnuts, and doughnuts within doughnuts. Indeed, there are a number of laugh-out-loud moments in the film and more than a few opportunities for a sly chuckle (watch for the final shot).

The cast is universally excellent, headed by Daniel Craig as Blanc and Ana de Armas as Marta.

Other acting nods go to Christopher Plumber, who sparkles as Thrombey, Jamie Lee Curtis as Linda, his eldest daughter, and Don Johnson as her husband. Toni Collette produces a very nice turn as a lifestyle guru and influencer who’s Harlan’s widowed daughter in law.

As Harlan’s grandson, Chris Evans gets a post-Marvel opportunity to show that he’s not as wooden as Captain America, while Michael Shannon is very effectively creepy as Walt, Harlan’s youngest son.

Thoroughly enjoyable – and sticks in the mind for some time after.

Winter is coming ... to the beach

Every year, at around about this time, I take a number of books off shelves and stack them in a corner of the flat.

Then, over the following period, they are shuffled, increased one day and decreased the next, as I debate whether or not this is the right selection for holiday reading and whether there are enough books or too many.

Every year, I am told by people that I should get a Kindle. Every year, I explain that:

I do not actually like reading books on a tablet;

if I drop a book on a damp beach, the damage will never be greater than a single lost book;

I distrust The Cloud and continue to prefer to actually have my ‘stuff’ under my control and my control alone.

The first part of this usually occurs a month or so before a trip. This time around, it has been just a few days – which possibly suggests how welcome the trip itself is going to be.

And while there is therefore little adjustment time, the pile itself reveals a considerable jolt in my reading habits over the last eight months or so.

Back in ancient times – okay, the end of the 1970s and beginning of the following decade – I ‘discovered’ horror and fantasy fiction.

In the case of the former, it was largely Stephen King and, in the latter, Tolkien and, a few years later, Terry Pratchett.

I read Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant novels avidly, plus works by William Horwood.

But then, Sir Terry apart, I drifted away from fantasy because it all really rather seemed to be largely inferior Lord of the Rings. This is possibly the point at which to state that, for vaguely complicated reasons, in my mid-twenties I did a series of commissioned illustrations of places from Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit for a hotel owner in Torquay who just happened to be called Tolkien and was a nephew of JRR.

Unfortunately (or not – I don’t recall them being stunning, and they took me an age) I have no record of them. Hey ho.

Be mother to your own Funko Pop dragon

Late last year, it seemed the time to pick up LoTR once more. Reading the first part again, I found myself thinking that Frodo is still wet and irritating, but I also enjoyed the poetic stuff much more, including Tom Bombadil.

And I moved from that to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy – works I’d been promising myself I should read for some years.

Thus far, I’ve only read the first book, Titus Groan: I didn’t find it a quick read, but it is a stunning one, and it reawakened by interest in fantasy. Surely there had to be works out there that didn’t just slavishly echo Tolkien’s formula?

One of the first books I found was Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – a sure fire hit given my predilection for Norse mythology (I have also been reading more extensively than before this year).

Half a dozen of the Sandman graphic novels sit on my shelves and there is also Dark Omens, a copy of the novel he co-wrote with Sir Terry years ago, but I had not dipped into any of his own novels.

Sure enough, I loved American Gods. I love Gaiman’s version of Odin and all the other gods from around the world that he brings to life.

The Other Half read and enjoyed it too, so his Anansi Boys is going with us on holiday.

The discovery of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks has opened up a wonderful variety of works, including Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, which is a slow burner, but draws you inexorably under its spell.

What is not a slow burner, however, is George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones – the first book in a series that seems to have spawned a little TV show.

Now I haven’t even watched a trailer for the TV version, but the first 800-page volume utterly gripped me.

This is masterful storytelling – not least given the number of threads that Martin develops at the same time and his ability to ensure that the reader never becomes confused or loses track of what’s going on and who is who.

... or your own direwolf

I still haven’t watched any of the TV version, but I am now aware of the look of it and the actors playing the main characters – and also some of the collectibles that are available. It is, as you may gather, my new favourite thing (just in time to be able to join in with all the comparisons between the stories and the state of British politics) .

The second book was the first thing into this year’s book pile – followed a short while later by the third – or to be strictly accurate, part one of the third instalment.

TH White’s The Once and Future King – his series of novels about King Arthur, including The Sword in the Stone – makes the pile: another that The Other Half is also likely to indulge in. I’ve spent years thinking that I should read some version of Arthurian legend and the time has come.

After a recommendation from a delightful Polish barista in a local coffee shop, I have just been reading – and thoroughly enjoying – The Last Wish, a collection of short stories featuring Geralt, the witcher of Rivia, by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Blood of Elves, the first full novel, is already waiting on the shelf, but that is for another time.

For a change of flavour, the holiday fantasy is joined by two Maigret novels and one collection of three modern Italian crime fiction novellas.

But I already know that, as we head south on Friday, it will be A Clash of Kings that will be the first tome to be opened. I can hardly wait.

There can never be too many books

And so it is that World Book Day is upon us again – and almost gone, at the time of writing.

In an era where, increasingly, digital seems to dominate, it’s wonderful to think about books.

Yes, yes: I know that books can be digital too, but, to me – and many millions more – there is nothing to beat the tactile joy of a real book. Indeed, for billions of people on this planet, the old-fashioned variety of bound paper is all that they can hope to have access to.

Do you remember the joy when, as a child, you managed to read a book on your own for the first time?

I cannot remember the title of the first book I managed like that, but I remember sitting in a small red and white straw child’s basket chair with it, and being so proud when I got to the last page.

Not that long after, I took enormous pleasure in Enid Blyton’s Well Really, Mr Twiddle, which had me hooting with hysterical laughter.

Many years later, I got pretty much the same sense of pride from reading an entire Asterix book in German. Books always offer potential for new moments of personal achievement.

At the beginning of my twenties, I suffered some sort of breakdown after being injured and then chucked out of polytechnic. For ages, I couldn’t read – even much-loved books could not hold my concentration beyond the first few pages.

What revived reading for me was Stephen King. I picked up Carrie in a local bookshop and couldn’t it down. Then The Stand and It, with many more to follow.

I ‘discovered’ Terry Pratchett before he was anywhere near national treasure status, standing in a small sci-fi and fantasy bookshop to meet him once when nobody else was even around.

The result is three very precious signed volumes of the earliest Discworld novels.

Books – among the very first things I’d unpack in my nomadic early adulthood: get those out and it would start to feel like home.

Books, which provide a wonderful pre-holiday ritual when considering what from my buckling shelves I wish to take.

Books, which bring with them knowledge and entertainment.

While the majority of the books that I have bought in recent years have been non-fiction, I still seek out good storytelling too.

Penguin are now releasing the entire Maigret collection, and with new translations that finally do Simenon’s noir novels justice. Those are on pre-order with me.

There are old friends that I have read many times already and will probably read many times more: Jan Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (which I hated at school), Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Stephen King’s The Shining (the movie was crap) and Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, all of which I find new things in every time I pick them up.

I have a few antiquarian (relish that word) books – some up to 200 years old. They are to be treasured and looked after: I feel only a temporary guardian.

And I also rather pride myself on having a collection of books about German history – no! Not that period! – that would, I suspect, count as pretty decent.

I still judge a bookshop on its history section: on whether it is just full of WWII and the Nazis or goes beyond that.

Of course, talking of the Nazis, it’s always worth remembering how they burnt books on Bebelplatz in Berlin in 1933 – right next to the Humboldt University. That symbolism should tell you something about the power of the written word. And today, of course, we have groups of religious fundamentalists who want to deny people – and women and girls in particular – the right to learn.

Whether in the deepest, darkest days or winter, curled up on the sofa with a good read and a hot chocolate or under a parasol on the beach in the height of summer, is there really anything that can compare to the pleasure that can be found in the pages of a good book?

So let’s celebrate books today – and those who create them and those who read them – but let’s never stop loving books for all the other days of the year.

And PS: make sure you love your local library too.

Small pleasures, from good eggs to good books

Della Street and Perry Mason

It’s doubtful that there is any better way to start a working day than a leisurely breakfast with a good book by your side.

If it means getting up a tad earlier and rushing a bit more, the more relaxed minutes that follow make it worth while.

And Albertini, a small, local café just off Euston Road – so just away from the worst of the traffic fumes and noise – is the perfect spot for such indulgence.

Even the simplest foods can be got wrong. On Tuesday, with an appointment elsewhere early in the morning, breakfast was taken in an old-fashioned greasy spoon, where the eggs and baked beans did the job of providing fuel, but nothing more.

But whoever is on duty at Albertini in a morning, be it Albert or Tini, they make a mean fried egg on toast, and it’s one of life’s small pleasures to sit and eat, taking care to avoid any of the rich, golden yolk dripping onto the plate.

And then there’s the coffee: a good old-fashioned, plain white mug – none of that overpriced, absurdly-named stuff so beloved of the endless chains that have invaded these shores in the wake of Friends.

There are no baristas at Albertini, but there is always good coffee, at a decent price.

Once the eggs are consumed, I pull the mug closer and return to whatever my current reading matter is.

It’s all been fiction of late – simply because my non-fiction reading, volume one of John Richardson’s behemoth of a three-volume Life of Picasso (with a fourth volume in the offing) may be brilliant, but it is also far too big and too heavy to lug around in a day-to-day bag.

And as so often, crime fiction is what I turn to when I want something a little lighter to read, but which still doesn’t actually insult the little grey cells.

So here is a brief look at a few recent reads – although that doesn’t mean they’re new books.

Earl Stanley Gardener’s the Case of the Stuttering Bishop is really the odd one out in this batch – it’ll become clear why quite quickly – so I’ll start with that.

There’s not really much to say about the Perry Mason books except that they’re fun in a fairly predictable way, but without the writing itself being too ‘pulpy’.

When I lodged in Bloomsbury some years ago, my landlady had most of them, in lovely old editions, on narrow shelves in the flat’s littlest room. I developed a fondness for them then and it was nice to return to one now.

They remain snappy and twisty, with a strong set of central characters – even though the descriptions are largely irrelevant, because I can’t see Mason as anyone other than the late Raymond Burr and Della Street as anyone other than Barbara Hale, while William Katt (Hale’s son), who played Paul Drake in the later TV reincarnation, looks nothing like the Drake of the written page.

But no matter, it was good fun.

Arturo Peréz-Reverte is the Spanish author who has given us, among many other works, The Club Dumas, which was subsequently adapted into The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp.

The Flanders Panel starts with the discovery of a hidden clue in an old work of art, hinting at foul deeds.

In a 15th-century Flemish painting, two noblemen are pictured playing chess. Yet two years before it was painted, one of them had been murdered.

Five centuries later, in Madrid, picture restorer Julia is preparing the work for auction and uncovers a hidden inscription in Latin that points to the crime: Quis necavit equitem? Who killed the knight?

But this isn’t just a medieval mystery, because it becomes clear that, even after five centuries, the game isn’t up.

Combining art and chess, Peréz-Reverte spins a tale that possesses a genuinely creepy quality. And he writes so convincingly that you do find yourself wondering if the painting and the painter really existed.

Thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying, and with a conclusion that surprises – well, it surprised me.

Montalbano and Catarella

Having discovered that another Spanish writer, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, influenced Andrea Camilleri to the extent that the latter named his own protagonist after him, I decided to chase down some of the books that are available in translation.

Murder in the Central Committee possibly isn’t the best of the Pepe Carvalho series to begin with, since it uproots the private detective from his usual Barcelona setting and sends him to Madrid to solve an apparent closed-room killing.

In a Spain still recovering from the Franco years, the murder of the general secretary of the country’s communist party causes unrest.

Can Carvalho, drafted in as a former member of the party because he understands its workings, solve the case?

Rather over-wordy on occasion – particularly when he’s illustrating that he does actually know the politics – it’s still an interesting read with a quirky central character, and while Montalbán isn’t in the business of rubbishing communism, he’s good on the way people will argue over the finest imaginable points of what could be described as political theology.

I look forward to reading one of the Carvalho books that’s set in Barcelona.

But this moves us nicely to Camilleri and The Voice of the Violin, the fourth of his series of novels about Sicilian police inspector, Montalbano.

Here, our hero is faced with the murder of a woman that has all the hallmarks of having been the result of a burglary – or was it a rape?

Camilleri can, extraordinarily, create stories of tragedy and horror, highlighting corruption and venality and many another human failing, yet all with a sense of humour underlying the deep cynicism.

Salvo Montalbano is a wonderful protagonist – unorthodox, flawed but humane, and there’s a delightful cast of other regular characters too. In this novel in particular, the well-meaning but woefully inept policeman Catarella offers comic delight, as well as providing a way to comment on ‘modern’ approaches to policing.

And if Montalbano was named in homage to Montalbán, then another common factor is the love of food of both author’s central figures.

Mind, just as with Perry Mason, I can now no longer read about Montalbano without seeing Luca Zingaretti in my mind’s eye. They’re wonderful adaptations, but it leaves you with the question of whether seeing them impinges on the altogether more individual experience of reading the stories.

It’s not as though, however, these a 'bad' performances or examples of casting. And Angelo Russo’s Catarella actually helps read the character's muddled language.

Finally, a new discovery from Italy.

Gianrico Carofiglio is a former anti-Mafia prosecutor-turned author from Bari, and Involuntary Witness serves as his introduction to lawyer Guido Guerrieri, who now features in three further novels.

Guerrieri’s wife is leaving him, he’s hitting an early mid-life crisis and depression that’s only exacerbated by making a living that often involves defending the less-than-innocent.

Then he finds himself defending a Senegalese immigrant who is accused of murdering a nine-year-old boy.

Not only does he have his own demons to contend with, the lawyer faces small-town racism and a judicial system that is going to make any defence difficult.

If all that sounds incredibly heavy going, it’s to Carofiglio’s enormous credit that it simply flies past, leavened as it is with a great deal of dark, self-deprecating humour.

A great onslaught on the idea of Italian machismo, Carofiglio has produced a powerful novel about redemption.

It’s absolutely superb – just don’t read the final pages anywhere in public, whether on a bus or over a plate of eggs on toast in a café anywhere.

When similes go bad

There should be a law about similes. Or at least the over use of them in novels.

A couple of days ago, I gave up reading March Violets by Philip Kerr, as I was on the verge of throwing it at something.

Described variously as “brilliantly innovative” (Salman Rushdie in the Independent on Sunday) and as having “echoes of Raymond Chandler but [being] better on his vivid and well-researched detail than the master” (Evening Standard), it’s the first of what constitutes the Berlin Noir trilogy, with further installments published later.

Set in 1936 in the German capital, it features private detective Bernie Gunther, a former policeman.

It’s a great idea, but what the Standard describes as “well-researched detail” is, in fact, laid on with a trowel – not least when it comes to the aforementioned similes.

Here’s an early example:

“From her coat pocket she produced a small lace handerchief which seemed as improbable in her large, peasant hands as an antimacassar in those of Max Schmelling, the boxer ...”

Now, if you have to explain a simile to the reader, perhaps you shouldn’t bother in the first place.

It was with some relief that, a few pages later, Kerr didn’t feel the need to similarly explain who Horst Wessel was.

The comparisons with Chandler do Kerr no favours either.

If that “well-researched detail” is better, then it’s worth noting that Chandler was not writing anything that claimed to be a work of historical fiction, so such a comparison is unfair.

And while Kerr clearly is a clever writer, the cynicism of his protagonist comes across as forced and too clever by half.

In Chandler’s deft hands, Philip Marlowe’s world-weary persona never seems over the top, and is subtly leavened by, for instance, his observation of the nature of the novels’ California setting – passing mentions of the colour and scent of jacaranda, for example.

In other words, there are sensibilities beneath Marlowe’s hard-boiled exterior.

If you’re going to do ‘clever’ and make historical and cultural references, there are other authors doing it far better.

Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula novels are riddled with references, historical and cultural, but he doesn’t feel a need to signpost them. You either spot them or you don’t – and part of the pleasure in reading the books is in seeing what you do spot.

And the same can be said of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not the film).

One of the things that this illustrates is just how subjective book reviewing is.

A review in the Guardian for Mortal Mischief, the first of Frank Tallis’s Liebermann Papers series, finds it to contain “too much history”.

As someone who’s about half way through that book right now, it seems that there’s enough to give and sense of authenticity and atmosphere, but nothing that leaves you feeling that the author is being overly clever or that gets in the way of the story itself.

Choosing to set his novels in fin-de-siècle Vienna, it allows him to explore some of the massive changes that were occurring at the time – not least in making his central protagonist, Max Liebermann, a young doctor who is acquainted with one Sigmund Freud, and who uses the new science of psychology in his contributions to criminal investigations.

Oh – and since it’s set in the Austrian capital, there’s cake. And lots of it.

One of Kerr’s other problems is that of writing a novel set not just in a different time, with historic events at its heart, but also in a different place.

I can think of a host of 1930s novels about Berlin to recommend instead of this if you want to get the atmosphere – Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, for instance, or Fabian (now republished in a restored, uncensored version, as Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist) from Emil and the Detectives author Erich Kästner.

And there’s always Christopher Isherwood, who was actually there at the time – and yes, almost inevitably, Kerr uses a metaphor about “Kit Kat” girls.

Of course, the different attitudes toward the historic backgrounds of both books could simply be a reflection of the fact that one of those periods continues to obsess British readers and the other does not.

Run a search for ‘Nazis’ in books on Amazon, and it produces 16,330 results – not all of which will entirely fit the bill, but it gives you an idea.

Run a similar search for fin-de-siècle Vienna, and you get 1,279 results – and that too includes things like tourist guides to the city in the very much here and now.

It is, of course, entirely possible to pen a novel set against historic events in a country and culture that’s different from your own – Martin Cruz Smith is evidence of that.

If he set himself an almost impossible standard with Gorky Park, the first Arkady Renko thriller, the second and thirds one, Polar Star and Red Square respectively, are still a very good outing and in the latter particularly, historic events present a backdrop to the story.

The thing is with Smith, he’s good enough to weave fiction and fact together seamlessly and without ever seeming to be over-egging the pudding.

You don’t sit there, turning pages and thing: ‘My god, how clever is this writer?’ Instead, you simply wonder how it’s all going to turn out – and you keep turning the pages.

It might be that the stereotype of the melancholic Russian, steeped in vodka, is just that – a stereotype – but stereotypes also exist for a reason.

And here too, Smith gives his Renko books a great sense of empathy and atmosphere.

Still, as all this just goes to show, literature – even for professional reviewers; and that’s a role I’ve played – is more subjective than objective, particularly where fiction’s concerned.

It’s also always useful to be reminded of what quality is by seeing what it isn’t. And if Berlin Noir did nothing else, the obvious comparison with Chandler made me realise, yet again, what an absolute poet that man was.