The plot introduces some new bad people: a local teenage thug a tough-nut female drug dealer who (helpfully) goes weak at the knees around Bogdan a high-level underworld “middle man” from whom mafia diamonds have been stolen on impulse by a raffish ex-husband of Elizabeth’s. The foursome’s cosy relationship with the local Fairhaven police detectives – young Donna and her boss, Chris – is now established as a firm friendship the wonderfully buff Polish handyman Bogdan is likewise reliably on hand. The new book wastes no time allowing time to pass, which is sensible, yet we feel that things have moved on. She provides a decent proportion of the narration and a very large number of the laughs. A former nurse, Joyce is likely to comment favourably on the shade of someone’s blouse while in the presence of a headless corpse. Most memorable of all, however, is the cheerful, unshockable Joyce. Ron is a bolshie former union agitator who automatically disbelieves anything he’s told Ibrahim is a highly organised retired psychiatrist, happy only when making lists or explaining something. But the others possess useful, Avengers Assemble-type complementary gifts. It helps that their leader, Elizabeth Best, is ex-secret service, and is always having hilarious flashbacks to East Berlin in 1970. But the formula is fiendishly clever: four senior-citizen friends living in a Kent retirement community have decided to eschew the usual 5,000-piece jigsaws to pool their intelligence and solve murders. What couldn’t have been predicted about Osman’s books was that they would sell quite so phenomenally well, or be so good.

The man who died twice richard osman