The Man Who Died Twice

By Richard Osman, published in 2021 by Viking Press, 352 pages
Reviewed by Tom Vogt, April 6, 2022

Like many people in their 70s, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim have a lot of time on their hands. They also have too much life experience to spend that time just watching the calendar pages flip.

So they solve murders. The four retirees call themselves "The Thursday Murder Club," which also is the name of Richard Osman's 2020 debut novel. (I want to know more about how the group got together, but there is a long waiting list for that book at our library.)

According to a quick survey of online reviews, Osman's series fits a category known as "cozy mysteries." They feature women who use their wits and observational skills to solve crimes in their communities. I've never read any cozies – until this one, anyway. But the long-running "Murder, She Wrote" mystery series was cited as a televised version of the genre, so I get the concept. "Only Murders in the Building" seems to be a current example, but we don't get that streaming service.

Members of the club are Elizabeth, a retired British spy; Joyce, a former ER nurse; Ron, a retired labor organizer; and Ibrahim, a psychotherapist. All are residents of Coopers Chase, a senior-living village in an English seaside town.

Elizabeth has the Jessica Fletcher role in these books, with one big difference. In addition to identifying killers, we know that Elizabeth has killed a few people herself.

Osman has created four appealing lead characters. Their individual experiences contribute to the crime-solving enterprise. But they also have their own sorrows. Early in "The Man Who Died Twice," Osman describes Joyce's daily grief in two sentences that I will remember long after I've forgotten the plot:

When I woke up and realized Gerry had gone, my heart broke once again, and I sobbed and sobbed. I imagine if you could hear all the morning tears in this place it would sound like birdsong.

Osman also provides nice reflective moments for supporting characters. Martin Lomax, a middleman for international crime cartels, is giving a female visitor a tour of his garden. When she is inspired to quote a bit of verse, it bounces right off him. As Osman writes of Lomax: He once killed a poet, but that's as far as he and poetry go.

Osman's smile-inducing style helped compensate for one issue I had with the book: There were too many question marks. The book includes a lot of internal dialogue, as characters engage in lengthy Q&A sessions with themselves. Maybe other readers won't even notice. But once I sensed a pattern, I couldn't let it go. Eventually, I started counting the question marks on some "?"-heavy pages: 16, 14, 15, 14, 10, 14, 17 ...

Given that quibble, am I still looking forward to reading the first book in the series? And will I be waiting to read the third book, "The Bullet That Missed," when it is released in the fall?

No question.