Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him at home. His days of adventure are over. Adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy's job now. Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. Working in private security, every day is dangerous. She's currently on a remote island protecting mega-bestselling author Rosie D'Antonio, until a dead body and a bag of money mean trouble in paradise. So she sends an SOS to the only person she trusts . . . As a thrilling race around the world begins, can Amy and Steve outrun and outsmart a killer?
A more ambitious series ... Not that Osman has deviated entirely from his winning formula. While offering more in scale and scope, the British author continues to play to his considerable strengths by serving up a fiendish mystery and rollicking adventure suffused with warmth and wit ... A busy book ... As the cast grows and one plot strand gives way to another, we begin to worry that the book will sag under its own weight. But Osman knows exactly what he is doing. His multiple characters and many layers lend variety and vivacity to the proceedings ... Both an auspicious start to an entertaining new series and a perfect stopgap to tide us over until Joyce and her friends beguile us all over again.
Osman sends this crew on a globe-spanning investigation, enlivening his tale with dry wit, crisp dialogue, sharply drawn characters and a pinch or three of sentiment.
The peddler of cosy contemporary crime novels turns peddler of cosy airport thriller ... I read We Solve Murders in a few pleasured gulps. It’s amusing rather than outright funny, involved rather than actually ever tense: everyone here is too ready with a pithy quip or a deft rejoinder for their safety to feel too pressing a concern ... Even if my heart rate was never raised, I was always interested in what came next. Osman doesn’t cheat on his plotting, even if he can be too quick to explain his characters rather than let them just be, sometimes shoehorning in sentiment as he does so ... Osman writes exactly the densely plotted, highly accessible book he wants to. One character’s diatribe, about poached eggs, is structured with a punchline like a full-blown comedy routine. Osman could be funnier if he wanted to be, could be gnarlier if he wanted to be, but he knows he would leave some people behind en route.
