ANNA CREER reviews new books from two star crime writers: one “convoluted with twists and turns”, the other “powerful and poignant”. 

Since the publication of The Thursday Murder Club (2020), Richard Osman has become a crime fiction sensation.

There have been five best-selling novels, set in a retirement village, so far, with the detecting quartet of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron.

In 2024, Osman introduced a new series with We Solve Murders, featuring Steve Wheeler, an ex-policeman, his bodyguard-trained daughter-in-law, Amy and the world’s best-selling crime-fiction writer, Rosie D’Antonio.

It was an instant success with Nielsen Bookscan reporting it was “one of the best hardback fiction first week performances since records began”. Steve, Amy and Rosie return in We Chase Shadows (Penguin) with their first case since opening an agency called We Solve Murders.

However, as yet, no-one has given them a murder to solve, because people who need murders solving “pursue a more traditional murder-solving route. The police and so on.” 

But in Tuscany, Vern Blackwood doesn’t want to involve the police in the murder of one of his bodyguards and a note on the body threatening his own life, signed by Jakob Eriksson.

Vern is a criminal who describes his business selling fake vitamins and supplements as “shadowy rather than downright illegal”. Eriksson and Vern met five years ago with four others to agree to operate their illegal businesses in their designated part of the world but since then Eriksson has killed three of the six.

Vern believes, however, that someone is using Eriksson’s name to frighten him and he wants to know why.

The resulting search takes Steve, Amy and Rosie from Italy to Barcelona, Palm Springs and eventually back to Axley, Steve’s village in the UK, leaving dead bodies in their wake.

This series lacks the vitality of the Thursday Murder Club mysteries. The characters are one dimensional, almost caricatures. The plot of We Chase Shadows is convoluted with twists and turns that are exasperating.

Osman depends on lots of in-jokes about British life, presenting an image of a privileged Britain, far removed from the reality of Britain’s current problems. None of this will matter to his legions of fans.

However, the good news is that his next novel returns to the retirement village.

IT was a pleasure, therefore, to pick up The Dying Light, the latest by Anne Cleeves.

Cleeves has been writing crime fiction for 40 years, creating the memorable characters of both Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez.

Her fiction is always fully grounded in an in-depth understanding of their settings, for instance Vera Stanhope’s north eastern England and Perez’s Shetland.

In 2019, with The Long Call, Cleeves introduced her Two Rivers series with a new detective, Matthew Venn, and a new location, North Devon. The Dying Light (Macmillan) is the fourth in the series.

Venn is a man of principle, troubled by his past. He grew up in a strict evangelical community, The Barum Brethren, until he denounced his faith and was cast out by both his church and his family.

As a detective, he likes to be not only in control of an investigation but also of himself.

In The Dying Light, Venn is called to investigate the death of Lottie, a young woman found in the swimming pool of the holiday home of a prominent politician, Paul Armstrong. 

Then, her friend, Armstrong’s daughter, Hannah, is discovered murdered on a path to the nearby beach.

The Chief Constable tells Venn: “You’re the best murder detective in the region. Since you’ve joined us, the cases you’ve worked have been sensitive and complex and you’ve managed them all with dignity and competence.”

Venn will need all his sensitivity and control to deal with Armstrong who is “a publicist’s dream, charming, good looking, self deprecating… already a junior minister and tipped for stardom, perhaps the highest office in the land”.

Armstrong and his wife and their two young sons arrive at Tide House to discover their daughter and her friend are dead. The girls had come the day before to attend a music festival at a nearby farm and it’s there that Venn looks for suspects, both local and outsiders.

The inevitable publicity is intense from the press and on social media, where Lottie had been a popular influencer. Pressure to solve the case mounts as Venn and his small team try to decipher the truth from deception.

Cleeves once again reveals her talents as a storyteller and a perceptive observer of human nature. Her portrayal, in The Dying Light, of the impact of grief is powerful and poignant.

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