So I’ve finally read them all, all four of Richard Osman‘s The Thursday Murder Club crime novels. Not in the order in which they were published, due to their availability in our public library (so that in the end I actually bought three of them). I do recommend reading them in their order of publication though, so first The Thursday Murder Club (2020) itself, as it presents the main characters, followed by The Man who Died Twice (2021), The Bullet that Missed (2022) and The Last Devil Today (2023). They probably could be read independently, but there is a continuing line of storytelling, and the final novel neatly and sadly wraps the whole series up.

As I wrote elsewhere on this blog, I find it impossible to read without a pencil, especially when I come across metalinguistic comments relating to prescriptivism (and this blog). And yes, I found them in Osman’s novels, too. On the who/whom issue in the very first of them, for instance, or on I/me and got for have in the last one I read (The Man who Died Twice).

The comments all make sense, as making linguistic corrections is in line with the character of Elizabeth, former MI5 agent, but reading the Acknowledgements (as I always do) made me think that something else is going on. In all except for the closing novel Osman pays thanks to his editors, Trevor Horwood (twice, for the first two) and Natalie Wall (for the third) for pointing out particular linguistic strictures to him and (presumably) making him correct his language accordingly:

• … my copy-editor, Trevor Horwood, without who I would never know what days of the week certain dates were in 1971. Or, as Trevor would immediately point out, ‘without whom’ (p. 381)
• Trevor, is it OK that I started a sentence with ‘And’ just now? Let me know. (p. 422)
• Natalie is the first person ever to succinctly explain to me when I should be using ‘which’ and when I should be using ‘that’. It is a piece of information that I will always remember (p. 411)

That last comment makes me wonder whether Natalie Wall is perhaps American, even though she appears to have been part of the UK publishing team? See p. 420 of novel number 4, which, surprisingly at this stage, contains no linguistic thanks to his editors (I looked three times).

What does all this mean? To me it suggests that Osman was playing a linguistic game with his editors, who may have pointed out particular linguistic infelicities (I find it striking, for instance, to find what looks like a deliberate split infinitive in the acknowledgement to Natalie). It may even be the case that he put in particular covert metalinguistic comments in his novels, just to make the point that in his eyes such criticism was trivial. And that by the fourth novel he had tired of the game, and chose not to comment on the linguistic editing process any more.

There won’t be any more Thursday Murder Club crime novels, it seems, but the good news is that the series is being adapted into a Netflix film, with Helen Mirren being cast as Elizabeth, Pierce Brosnan as Ron,  Ben Kingsley as Ibrahim and Celia Imrie as Joyce. What a cast, and what a film to look forward to. Needless to say, I’ll watch with pencil and notebook at hand to see whether any of the metalinguistic comments made it into the script.

[Thank you Lyda, and Joan for confirming this, for commenting that “earlier this year Osman announced on FB that the series’ fifth book will be coming next year”. Will be hugely looking forward to it, and also to see if Richard Osman will continue to haggle with his editors over issues of prescriptivism.]