Many of the characters Osman writes about are types that we have met in his Thursday Murder Club mysteries.
The plot can seem unnecessarily convoluted at times and at others, very simple to sort out.
We Chase Shadows is a guaranteed page turner.
We Chase Shadows (Penguin Random House) is the second of Osman’s father and daughter-in-law crime busters series with the addition of a bestselling novelist called Rosie D’Antonio. Readers of We Solve Murders will have met Rosie in the first book where she had hired Amy as her bodyguard and as a result in the middle of bodies mounting up, have met Amy’s father-in-law Steve. They are two very different people, linked by Amy’s husband who is a stockbroker on a third continent. Steve, an ex-cop is the investigative brains of the village in which he lives.
Many of the characters Osman writes about are types that we have met in his Thursday Murder Club mysteries, pub frequenters and those who live peaceful secluded lives, so one might wonder why he chose to embark on a new series, Steve after all, comes into the senior’s category and he is a widower who would have fitted snugly into the previous series. So, for that matter, is the beautiful Rosie who hides her age as adroitly as she can. As far as Osman is concerned, friendship, work and adventure have no age limit.
Rosie, however, has legitimised ‘We Solve Murders’ into a professional detective company with a United Kingdom office and secretary. Thanks to her, Steve and Amy have a private jet at their disposal. The result is a cross-border mystery written in the typical Osman style but with more excitement and pace. We Chase Shadows deposits a dead bodyguard on the marble doorstep of his employer in the hills of Italy. Vern Blackwood, a shady millionaire promptly calls in the We Solve Murders team–rescuing them from the fact that they haven’t managed any clients to date.
This is where Rosie’s private jet comes in useful–a taxi service that takes them from airport to airport much to Steve’s alarm, especially since he hates hot countries. They skim through Italy, Malaga, Sweden–cold at least –usually in a single day, while Steve loses track of where they’re going, on the trail of a single elusive suspect whom they can only identify through a photograph of a bald head.
The relationship between the three is more important than the mechanics of the mystery. There is an easy affection between them and Osman is good at showing how a makeshift professional partnership gradually becomes a kind of family. Steve’s understated humour provides a counterpoint to Rosie’s flamboyance, while Amy often finds herself trying to keep both of them under control as flirtation and criminals collide. There are also issues of love and marriage thrown in–Steve’s love for his dead wife, Amy’s long distance relationship with Adam and her need to belong, and Rosie’s determined search for lovers.
There is a warning against popping vitamins and using face packs though it is disguised as an integral part of a money-making racket–however, it is presumably Osman’s opinion of the pill-popping youth obsessed generation of baby boomers. We also get a bird’s-eye view of the problems of being a bestselling author. Rosie’s fifth book is only fifth on the charts and her 25-year-old publisher is threatening to end The contract. The title sounds rather like one of Osman’s books; The Last Devil to Die and The Devil Blinked First are too close not to have been contrived for Osman fans.
Osman’s greatest strength remains his ability to make a murder mystery warm and funny without making the murders themselves seem trivial. The jokes are frequent, the banter is brisk and there are plenty of comic observations about British habits, television and the differences between Steve’s modest world and Rosie’s extraordinary one. The humour is particularly effective when it arises from character rather than just being put in to lighten the plot.
The plot itself, however can seem unnecessarily convoluted at times and at others, very simple to sort out. But it remains a cheerful page turner that is cosy to curl up with even though the bodies do pile up at the end with an armoury of guns toted on occasion by rather unlikely users.
What is unfair to Osman is the fact that comparisons with Thursday Murder Club are inevitable–even though he is trying for a new pace and a new set of characters who are more jet setting. He seems to be exploring a Frederick Forsyth kind of world, bringing in high-stakes hits while keeping to his own gentle way of looking at murder without undue gore. Steve and Amy (not to mention Rosie) have no history yet for comparisons.
(Anjana Basu is a writer and an advertising consultant based in Kolkata. Her recent works include The House the Press Built and Translating for Rituparno)
