Another -- da-DAA! -- physical book! My third this year, if I'm counting correctly.

The "because" of that is a bit curious, though. We were in a local bookshop, one of these chain bookshops that you get in malls. We were just having a look round, because we hadn't for a long time, when we heard this oldish white man complaining to the young assistants, in a loud, peevish, and hectoring voice, that this shop's books were "all CRAP". Yes, in exactly those words. He went on, obnoxiously and tediously, to enlarge on this view. Not wanting to start an argument with the guy, which would have embarrassed the assistants even further, I decided we'd buy a book. A real book. Put our money into the local bookshop. Show these young people that their books are perfectly OK. Which they are. Looking round, I saw several things I would have been happy to buy.

But it had to be a book we'd both read. So we opted for this, the sequel to The Thursday Murder Club, which we'd both enjoyed listening to.

Written by Richard Osman, and published in 2021, it features the same four elderly sleuths as its predecessor (Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim). They amuse themselves by attempting to solve cold cases from the comfort of their retirement complex in Kent, and occasionally (as here) get dragged into real crime stuff.



In this one, Elizabeth's Secret Squirrel past is very much to the fore. She unexpectedly comes up against a former colleague, Douglas, and learns that -- as a sideshow to a covert mission -- he has not only stolen some diamonds that belong to the mafia, but also has inadvertently allowed his identity to be discovered. Now, unsurprisingly, he has a target on his back, and has been assigned a minder, namely, the warm-hearted sharp-shooter Poppy. Elizabeth instantly snaps back into operational mode, solving clues, thinking six steps ahead, and generally plotting and scheming.

Joyce and Ron carry on being Joyce (bright and perky) and Ron (heart-of-gold and swaggery). But Ibrahim is really up against it. While he's in town, having a nice time, he's mugged. Not only does he suffer serious injuries, necessitating a spell in hospital, but also -- and much more seriously -- his confidence is so badly knocked that, once home, he never wants to go out again. I've seen this kind of thing happen in my own family. The aggression doesn't even need to be physical. Verbal threats from someone young and strong can be enough to make someone vulnerable change his/her habits and haunts in a way that is genuinely life-narrowing. Ibrahim does eventually get back in the saddle, figuratively speaking (what DID Joyce say to him...?). But it's been a painful interlude.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth's husband, Stephen, whose incipient dementia was a worry in the last volume, is holding his own. Long may he continue. One of our two tame police officers, Donna, has been struggling with loneliness, but by the end of the story looks to be back on her feet (plus there's a bit of romantic interest coming her way). The other cop whom the famous four have nicely wrapped round their little finger is Chris. He's now getting on extremely well with Patrice, Donna's mum.

Bogdan has sprouted positively Schwarzeneggerian characteristics. He's quicker-thinking than ever; women swoon over him; and he's capable of immobilizing three gun-toting villains in less than 20 seconds.

You see how I'm focusing on the characters, rather than the story? This is because the characters, for Osman, are really what matter. Yes, it's a fun story, with plenty of grown-up action (drugs, hits, stings, arms-dealing, Open Garden events...). But what matters is the people.


As I said in that previous Osman post, this is Dorset, not Kent, but still irreproachably English

Like the first in the series, The Man Who Died Twice is a very moving meditation on aging. I won't say anything to give away the plot, but that title -- well, it's not referring to what you THINK it's referring to most of the way through the book, and what it IS referring to is very poignant.

Then there's Ibrahim and his struggles. At one point, after the attack, he tells his hairdresser: "When you are eighty whatever doesn't kill you just ushers you through the next door, and the next door and the next, and all of these doors lock behind you. No bouncing back." Even when Joyce coaxes him out again, he's still in a dark mood. When Joyce remarks that life is all about happiness, he responds: "I can't agree. The secret of life is death. Everything is about death, you see... Our existence only makes sense because of it; it provides meaning to our narrative." (But crafty old Joyce realizes the flaw in this argument: "Surely, if everything is about death, then also NOTHING is about death?... Just say that everything was blue... If EVERYTHING was blue then we wouldn't need the word 'blue', would we?")

Osman also shows us the ones who can't -- or won't -- keep up. Douglas, for example, has failed to stay abreast of the times: "He is left with the tools of a different age. Jokes he can't tell, passes he can't make. And without them, what has he got?"

I'm not sure if the temptation to stereotyping increases with age (I've met prejudiced young people, for sure), but it's always a hazard to be aware of. At one point, Elizabeth thinks: "Poppy's generation were used to generating fake emotion, weren't they? A whole generation, outraged at the slightest thing, sensitive to the slightest criticism, honestly, whatever happened to... wait a minute, she realizes she doesn't really believe that, she had just read a Daily Express someone had left on the train. Most young people were like Donna, fighting new fights. Good luck to them."

So why does this all work? It's slight; it's far-fetched; the tug it gives your heartstrings is anything but subtle. And yet -- it works.



There are two reasons, I think.

Firstly, it's funny. There are countless throw-away one-liners: "Zimmer frames make you look fat," says Ron. "It's the thin legs." Or there's Joyce's desire for a dog, but not a big one: "I haven't got the hoover for a big dog."

But a lot of the humour derives from Osman's unrivalled ability to exploit incongruities. Here, for example, is a bit of the dialogue between Martin (arms-dealer, fixer, killer) and Frank (mafia man, and potentially Martin's executioner):

"'Frank, you're on mute, I think,' says Martin Lomax. 'You need to click on the little microphone. The green button.'...
"[Frank says he will kill Martin if he doesn't return the diamonds] 'Do you never get tired of all this?' says Martin Lomax. 'You know I didn't steal them, but there always has to be melodrama. I know you have a boss, but really, you should listen to yourself sometimes. You don't always have to kill everyone, Frank...
"'Get my diamonds,' says Frank.
"'Right you are,' says Martin Lomax. 'Love to Claudia and the kids.'
"Frank shouts off camera, then returns to the microphone. 'Claudia says hi back.'"

Later, when the diamonds turn up:

"'Looks like I won't have to kill you today, Martin!' 'Looks like it, Frank. How is your wife, did she get the muffins I sent?'"

Or there's this little gem towards the end, where Joyce -- having agreed to adopt a canine (Alan) -- is saying how glad she is that the dog rescue centre people didn't come round to do their vetting last week: "Sue had bled all over the kitchen floor, there were millions of pounds' worth of diamonds on the kitchen table and Bogdan was storing three guns under the spare-room duvet. I don't know what the rules are for 'fit and proper', but I imagine I would have been breaking one or two of them there."

You'd imagine this kind of humour, quintessentially British as it is, wouldn't travel well. But it does, it seems. In the Acknowledgements, Osman thanks his foreign publishers: "I am so happy that you have taken this very British story around the world, and that Joyce is now famous in China. I wonder what she would make of it?"



A second rare quality this book has in spades is that it's -- I think the word is comforting. Yes, there's plenty of violence, but pretty much always to the nasty people. There's a feeling of limits. And as you watch the fab four consorting chummily with their pet police officers, or the various personal relationships slowly coming right, it feels like reading a Winnie-the-Pooh or Wumpus story -- once you are old enough to appreciate them, that is. You're warmed and soothed as you read them, but you know (because you're now a bit older, and can analyse these things) that part of the pleasure is the poignancy that derives from the fragility of the little world they hold you in. Part of the experience is the sure and certain knowledge that your time spent with them is a fleeting moment, and once the book is shut, you're back in the real world, which is a much colder, bleaker place.

Winnie-the-Pooh is known to everyone, but I think Wumpus is a rarer beast. I was introduced to him by a friend in the first year of high school. So we were about 11, too old to be anything other than self-conscious readers. I remember nothing of the detail, and would never have recalled, for example, that he was a koala. I just remember that calm, warm, reassuring world I've been describing -- and an overwhelming sense of sadness that the real world is not like that...

I think Osman offers us the grown-up version of that same warm but oh-so-transient feeling.

Underlining the same idea, I would say, is the reference to An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin. If you look it up, you find that oft-quoted final line: "What will survive of us is love." But the rest of the poem complicates that sentiment, offering an ambivalence that holds together "the scrappiness of the sentiment [and] the telling strength of its untruth".

Just one point for my coda: I was interested to see the "Discussion questions for readers" at the back of the book. They're experiential rather than textual, and my favourite was this one: "Would you be happy with a dog named Alan?"

In sum, this was an enjoyable read. And it was nice to share it for once. Was it better than The Thursday Murder Club? Until about two thirds of the way through, I thought not. But in the last third, I changed my mind. Osman is in his stride now, so he doesn't have to work so hard to get the tram moving, and keep it rolling. And the plot is decidedly less convoluted, which is a good thing.

Onwards and upwards, then. We'll definitely be joining in for Round 3.