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Stuff I'm Reading

 Richard Osman's plots tend to fly over my head, but Osman is so clearly enjoying himself, I just keep reading.


Osman's special talent is to exaggerate certain qualities we all have--while still making his characters recognizably human.


In Osman's new novel, "We Solve Murders," Rosie, a ninety-year-old novelist with an insatiable appetite for sex, seduces various handymen while defending her own life against an assassin (and while, also, investigating a mystery). Rosie's sole moment of weakness seems to occur at an airport bookstore; if you watch closely, you might spot her hiding a Lee Child novel behind a title of her own.


Elsewhere, Bonnie, a young woman, dreams of a career as "an influencer." She sees an opportunity: She could sit poolside, in swimwear, while advertising the virtues of "organic paint." ("I hadn't even known that paint could be inorganic...") Bonnie rehearses her lines, in private: "Color brings happiness, and paint brings color....so paint is happiness...."


Finally, a crazed murderer makes use of ChatGPT: Now that AI is so accessible, the murderer can have all of his death threats rewritten in the voice of a chipper English gentleman. No one will ever catch the murderer through a careful study of idiosyncratic turns of phrase. Osman seems to have his most fun when writing from the point of view of a murderer: He can access a breezily amoral voice that no one else can write with (no one I know of).


Osman is an inspiration; I look forward to the Helen Mirren version of "The Thursday Murder Club."

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