I want to start by saying I enjoy a “cozy crime”, so before you think that this review is influenced by a snobbery for what counts as good crime fiction, it is not. Now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, I must admit that Osman lost me with this one. I read the first Thursday Murder Club book and thoroughly enjoyed it, even wrote a review of it and gave it a whopping 8/10 (I was a bit more liberal with my ratings back then). The initial excitement of the read never carried over enough to convince me to read the subsequent titles in his series, but I remembered it fondly enough to want to give We Solve Murders a go.
Amy Wheeler is serving as a body guard for world-renowned author Rosie D’Antonio when people who employ her company start getting picked off one by one. The murders seem to implicate her, drawing herself and Rosie into increasingly complicated situations. Amy enlists the help of her father-in-law Steve, a retired policeman, to help them solve the case. Steve, whose typical weekly excitement is the pub quiz, is a reticent and reluctant member of the team, but plays a vital part in the end.
If you’ll allow me a moment of contradiction, it was too much and not enough all at once. The story started with so many characters and voices and situations that it felt like an overwhelming muddle of thoughts, followed swiftly by what felt like a stagnant story line, even though they were constantly on the move with an ever-present threat following them.
I could not get invested in this book for the life of me, and mainly powered through because my loan was set to expire. I thought the ending was fine, and I wouldn’t say that it was easy to figure out, but I can’t say I felt all that invested at the time it was all revealed. So I would chalk it up as a ‘fine’ book, but even that feels like a criticism when there are so many great books out there. So if you’re in the market for cosy crime, maybe pick up the Thursday Murder Club (and tell me how the other ones are).
2% Rating: 4/10
Recommend? Nope
Re-Read? Never
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