Best-selling author Osman on a BBC show: "I ended up on TV by accident"
Photo:
Jonathan Hordle / empics / picture alliance
Four pensioners, well into their seventies, residents of a rather luxurious retirement home in the English countryside, are the successors of Harry, Hermione and the other apprentice wizards from the Harry Potter series.
»The Man Who Died Twice«, the sequel to Richard Osman's successful book »The Thursday Murder Club«, which has just been published in German, is one of the best-selling novels in Great Britain.
Quite a sensation, because pensioners with the hobby of murder, that sounds dusty and old-fashioned at first.
Cozy Crime is the name given to the type of detective novels that mostly take place in the country and spread less thrill than cosiness – in some cases also: yawning.
Richard Osman's art consists of mixing excitement and humor with a third ingredient: he said in the interview conducted via Zoom that he wanted to make people feel good about reading, but not by ignoring reality.
Above all, however, it is his characters that make these novels so appealing.
Beyond the cliché of lovable quirkiness, they have a great deal of independence, and even if they may have one foot in the grave due to their old age: the other one is still damn solid in life.
And in this life, they find a new purpose: solving murder cases.
In The Man Who Died Twice, they deal with international organized crime and some rather dubious members of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5.
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Osman, your book The Thursday Murder Club was published in September 2020. By then, the coronavirus had already claimed many lives, especially in retirement homes.
Do you think your story of four fun-loving retirees whose biggest problem is boredom became so successful because it offered an alternative to harsh reality?
Richard Osman:
No, I don't think Corona has anything to do with my success, other than more people reading since the pandemic started, which of course is great.
I have, and this is more of an explanation, made my heroes people in their seventies, people who are often almost invisible and ignored in our society and who feel that life doesn't have much in store for them anymore.
SPIEGEL:
How did you come up with the idea?
Osman:
People of that age have learned to live with death and the fact that their bodies don't always function as they should.
At the same time they are the most educated and wisest people I know.
I wanted to celebrate them and most of all, and this appeals to many of my readers, I certainly didn't want to show stereotypes – older people are all too often portrayed as funny and slightly ridiculous – but real people with real problems and real pain.
My books say, and this is very important to me, that it doesn't matter how old you are: you can experience exciting things and make new friends if you don't give up.
SPIEGEL:
So you mainly have older readers for whom your novels are comfort and promise?
Osman:
No.
Readers approach me on the street almost every day.
And at first I was surprised how young many of them are.
They then tell me that when they are older they want to be like my characters.
SPIEGEL:
The fact that you are recognized in public is also due to the fact that you have long been known as a TV presenter in Great Britain.
We are conducting this interview during your lunch break while filming new episodes of your show House of Games.
A double life as a TV star and bestselling author sounds stressful.
Osman:
I definitely want to spend more time writing novels because it's what I really love.
I landed on television by accident, and actually I'm not the extroverted type.
I much prefer to sit at the computer and make up stories that make people laugh or shudder.
My advantage is that the TV shows are taped within three months, giving me nine months out of the year to work on becoming the new Agatha Christie.
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Richard Osman
The man who died twice
Publisher: List
Translated by: Sabine Roth
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: List
Translated by: Sabine Roth
Number of pages: 448
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SPIEGEL:
You allude to the many comparisons with the British crime queen, whose novels are very often set in the British countryside, like yours.
Is Christie a role model for you?
Osman:
Absolutely, because not only could she tell exciting stories, but she also had a lot to say about human nature and the England of her time.
Her novels and characters are so very British.
We're the politest people in the world, but we never say what we really think.
Evil often enough lurks beneath the polite surface: it's a gift for crime writers.
SPIEGEL:
Who else influenced you?
Osman:
Oh, there are many, like Patricia Highsmith or Ian Rankin.
But one of the greatest geniuses for me is Stephen King.
In a few hundred years, when people will be talking about the great American authors of the 20th century, they won't be talking about Saul Bellow,...
SPIEGEL:
...the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, whose novels like »Herzog« are part of the canon of world literature...
Osman:
…but talking about Stephen King.
He wrote incredibly entertaining stories, but his real strength is that he has so much to tell about the USA and the life of the people there.
SPIEGEL:
But your novels can definitely be read as cozy mysteries, right?
Osman:
Yes, I like puzzles.
But actually I write about modern Britain.
I want to show how people treat each other, what their values are and where they come from.
But I don't make that too obvious because then nobody would buy my books.
SPIEGEL:
You mix suspense and humor, which rarely works well in crime genres.
How did you manage this balancing act?
Osman:
By not even trying.
My rule when writing was no jokes.
First and foremost, I want to write exciting books, full of puzzles and interesting characters.
And it is precisely these characters that bring the humor to my books.
Sometimes I don't realize how funny a passage has become until I read it again.
SPIEGEL:
Your heroes deal with murder cases because they need some variety, a kick in life.
Does preoccupation with the death of others also have something to do with dealing with one's own mortality?
Osman:
My mother, who is like my characters in her late seventies, often deals with death because of her age.
For her there is nothing spiritual about dying, she is more detached than, say, the sort of writers who have built their entire careers on a serious study of mortality.
My characters are more like my mother, so pretty pragmatic.
And with her hobby, murder, death loses its sting a little more.
SPIEGEL:
Is your mother also a specific role model for one of your characters?
Osman:
Yes, a little bit for Joyce, the former nurse.
All her life my mother was surrounded by people who often had violent and loud arguments – we don't come from a particularly privileged background.
And while everyone around her was yelling, she kept quiet, listened and ended up telling the others who was right and who was wrong.
That's how Joyce is, an apparently naïve woman who has everything in view and can combine things with razor sharpness.
SPIEGEL:
You don't have a former MI5 agent like your character Elizabeth in your family, do you?
Osman:
No, she's useful to me as a writer because she was a spy, so she brings a lot of experience when it comes to murder.
I also found it appealing that as a woman she had to assert herself in a male-dominated profession, which gave her a hard shell.
And the nice thing is to see how this shell slowly starts to crack more and more due to the affection of the other three from the "Thursday Murder Club".
SPIEGEL:
In addition to the two women, there is also Ibrahim, the psychologist, and Ron, a former union activist.
What does Ron represent in your novel world?
Ottoman:
As a Brit, you can't write a novel that doesn't also deal with class differences.
So it was always clear to me that two of my heroes, Elizabeth and Ibrahim, must be upper-middle class and the other two, Joyce and Ron, must be working-class.
Ron used to fight against the neo-liberal restructuring of Great Britain and represents a large part of Britons who are still against Thatcherism and its consequences and for social solidarity.
I grew up in a very socialist family, my grandfather was an extreme left-wing policeman who, for example, refused to take action against striking miners.
And so there's a lot of me and my family history in Ron, we both believe it's wrong
SPIEGEL:
As a TV presenter, you have the reputation of being extremely nice and never making fun of your candidates.
This philanthropy is also noticeable in your novels.
Osman:
The world as it is presented to us by the media, especially social media, is a very divided world full of hate, in which there only seems to be right or wrong, good or bad.
But that doesn't correspond to what I experience when I'm on the road and meeting people.
I don't want to lecture or even tell people how to behave, but in a world where so much is based on untruths, I want to at least lie on the side of the good guys and write about a world where dogmatists don't rule .
SPIEGEL:
You've already talked about your mother and grandfather, but for a long time the best-known member of your family was your brother Mat, who became a star in the 1990s as co-founder and bassist of the Britpop band Suede.
Was his success a drive for you or was there competition between the brothers?
Osman:
He's a few years older than me and has always been and always will be my hero.
Coming like me from a family without money or a media background and seeing how Mat and his friends from Suede can achieve so much with their talent and hard work is obviously an inspiration.
We've never seen each other as competitors, even now that he's a writer himself.
His novels are also very different from mine.
Brilliant but different.
SPIEGEL:
Are you writing more novels with Joyce, Elizabeth and the others?
Osman:
I'm currently working on my third Thursday Murder Club and have a contract for a total of four novels in the series.
I'll definitely write more than these four, but first I'd like to flesh out an idea for another crime series with a more traditional detective.
SPIEGEL:
Your first novel was optioned by Steven Spielberg.
Are you involved in the filming?
Osman:
All I know is that the shooting is supposed to be this year, but fortunately I have nothing to do with it.
Who am I to give advice to the director of classics like ET?