The game is afoot

I have just finished Richard Osman’s best-selling crime novel The Man Who Died Twice, the follow-up to his runaway debut success with The Thursday Murder Club. While I found it mildly amusing and a cause for the occasional smile, the best bit came at the end, after Lesley Manville had finished reading it on Audible.

She and Osman had a 40 minute conversation about writing and narrating crime novels.
To be honest, Osman’s style does not work for me. Yes, I know I’m in a huge minority but that’s how it is. However he has given me the bug to explore the crime novel genre. My current favourite thriller writers are: Walter Mosley, the creator of LA private eye Ezekiel
‘Easy’ Rawlins; and Robert Galbraith (aka J K Rowling) with her Cormoran Strike stories.

While my writing experience has not equipped me to create anything as successful as these three authors, I have developed an itch to write a crime novel of my
own in 2022.

As a result:

1. I have signed up for a crime-writing course run by Times Newspapers from mid-February to mid-March.

2. I have bought and started reading one of the recommended books – I know what you’ve done, the latest by bestselling author Dorothy Koomsman

3. I’ve found a friend as a co-writer with whom I can work on this as a joint venture.

We have a good setting for our tale, and we are working on our main characters. We have devised a start, and we are discussing the ending and the identity of the villain.

I will keep you in touch with our progress, but my comments will cover the general aspects of crime writing as we don’t want to disclose our plot.


So, “The game is afoot”, as Conan Doyle famously wrote in The Adventure of the Abbey Grange. The origin of this famous quote is in Shakespeare’s play Henry IV, part 1.
We will not fall into the trap revealed by Shakespeare: “Before the game is afoot, thou still let'st slip.”