It could be argued that no-one could have predicted that popular TV personality Richard Osman would become quite the successful author in the way that he has, perhaps most of all Richard himself. The success of The Thursday Murder Club, his first comic-crime novel, to which The Man Who Died Twice is the follow-up, introduced him to a whole new audience and his new book will almost certainly make him a much-talked about name on many more lips.
TMWDT reintroduces the reader – or introduces if said reader hasn’t read the first book – to the four main stars of Osman’s work; Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim and Joyce, who, to say the least, aren’t your typical senior-citizen friends or neighbours but instead an incredibly clever group of people who rather than passing their time doing jigsaws, knitting and other cliché hobbies for/of ‘older folk’, prefer to solve murders. The plot to this new book introduces some murky characters in the form of a troublesome teen, a drug-dealer and to top it all off, a mafia related ‘middle man’ and one of Elizabeth’s ex-husbands. In order to handle all these people and the trouble they bring to the group and their lives, the four must use all their wits – albeit with a much appreciated and hugely amusing number of witty one-liners, notably from Joyce – to ensure this case becomes another they can tick off their ‘job done’ list.
It’s that humour, aside from the well-thought out and paced story itself, that makes The Man Who Died Twice such an enjoyable and, on many levels, relatable, almost personal, read. It adds an extra air of reality to events that unfold through the pages. The characters are alert, or made alert, to several realities of life – feeling unsafe in a confusing and complex, dangerous world, being made to look or feel stupid in the eyes and or minds of friends and loved ones and most truthfully, that time is running out for all of them, and us all. While some books tend to ignore real-life through the stories they tell, this one is grounded in and by it and it makes TMWDT one of those books you want or will want to share with others, and leaves you yearning to see what its protagonists will get up to next.
