LIVE! #75
7 December 2025
Agenda
- Why We're Here / Roundtable Rules
- Introduction to Literary Forensics
- Group Discussion
- Further Study
Why We're Here
We writers want to improve our craft
by reading like a writer
We learn from each other
using Literary Forensics
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
Practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
Reading Teaches Writing
Meet today's author: Richard Osman
- Osman grew up in West Sussex, England, the younger brother of musician Mat Osman, bass guitarist of the rock band Suede.
- He studied politics and sociology at Cambridge University, before becoming a television producer and quiz show host.
- Osman first gained fame in the UK as the co-creator and on-screen co-presenter of the long-running quiz show Pointless on BBC One TV, from 2009–2022.
- He went on to host other TV shows such as Two Tribes and Richard Osman's House of Games, which currently airs five days a week.
- In 2020, Osman attained international fame as novelist of the crime-fiction series The Thursday Murder Club, writing five installments to date. It was made into a movie in 2025 with an all-star cast.
- Osman writes a novel a year.
- We Solve Murders is the first novel of Osman's second murder mystery series.
"I've done five novels now, and more importantly, I've
read a thousand novels, and that's the key."
—Richard Osman
"If you've read read read your whole life, then you know how a story
makes you feel, and that's how you want your readers to feel."
—Richard Osman
"Plot...genuinely I don't think it's important... Everything to me
is character.... You can find a plot that will take you from A to B, but you want to spend time in the company of
characters you're interested in."
—Richard Osman
"[Whenever] your brain says to you you're a fraud and you can't write,
that's just a note to yourself to do that tomorrow... So anytime you hear something negative just go: No, hold on.
That's just what I'm going to work on tomorrow."
—Richard Osman
What do you feel?
What in the book elicited that feeling?
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but every conclusion should be questioned
We practice serendipity
- nothing is too crazy
Always refer back to the book
What do you notice?
Writing We Solve Murders
- After writing the first four Thursday Murder Club mysteries, Osman wanted to create a new series featuring a new cast of characters.
- He wanted to write about globetrotting, and so he first created a character who has no desire to travel:
Amy Wheeler's father-in-law Steve. - Osman was also interested in the dynamics of in-law relationships: "You don't have to love them--it's a choice."
- The Jackie Collins–like Rosie D'Antonio appeared early in the writing process and stayed.
- Osman does not do research, after he heard that Stephen King doesn't, either. He writes sequentially, often not knowing who the killer is most of the way through.
- We Solve Murders themes, in order of creation, are:
1) Influencers; 2) Dubai; 3) A cat named Trouble.
Stats & Background
- Marketing: Amateur Sleuths, Cozy Mysteries, Private Investigator Mysteries, Science Fiction Crime & Mystery, Genre Literature & Fiction
- Genre: Realistic Modern-Day Long-Form Archplot
- Print Pages: 400; Word count: 96,348
Reading Grade: 6th; Avg. wds/sent.: 9.34
Lexical Density: 49.68; Flesch Reading Ease: 81.05 - POV: 16; Person: 3rd; Tense: Present
- Publish date: September 17, 2024
- Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
- Audio book length: (10 hours, 32 mins)
- Narrator: Nicola Walker
- Recognition: Amazon "Best Books of the Year 2024", CBS Mornings pick, NY Times bestseller
