By Clea Simon

This novel is a fun, light read. But bestselling author Richard Osman needs to take more time to delve into his characters if he wants to equal his previous cozy mysteries.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. Pamela Dorman Books, 400 pp., $30

Long known in his native UK as a TV presenter, Richard Osman broke big onto the mystery scene with his Thursday Murder Club, a jovial take on the classic English village cozy, in which a motley mix of residents at a senior living facility take on local crimes … murder included. The book was followed by three others, which built on the original’s sly humor and the quirky characteristics of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Rob (who will soon be featured in film form starring Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan as the septuagenarian sleuths).

When Osman announced that the latest, The Last Devil to Die, would bring the series to a halt, at least temporarily, fans of humorous cozies were bereft – until the author announced that he’d be debuting a new series with a similar sensibility.

In truth, his new We Solve Murders does share much of the cheerful small town atmosphere of the Thursday Murder club books. Its protagonist, Steve Wheeler, a retired cop, is wallowing in his English village life, keeping busy with freelance work (mainly finding lost dogs), the weekly pub quiz, and daily talks with his late wife, Debbie, whom he misses terribly. But while his adult son Adam is off on business – and finds conversing with his dad difficult anyway – his daughter-in-law Amy worries that Steve’s life has gotten too small, his routines too regular.

That all ends, of course, when Amy, who works in private security, is framed for the murder of a former client. In the kind of logic that works in humorous mysteries, she decides that the one person she knows she can trust is Steve, and so he gets roped into a global chase that revives his cop instincts and shakes him out of his comfortable routine.

This is the kind of far-fetched setup that works when handled well, and Osman does manage to make the various leaps of faith – the private jets, the sudden acquisition of unlikely clues, the unshakeable aplomb of Amy’s current celebrity client – both humorous and almost feasible.

Perhaps it is this focus on a globe-trotting plot that trips the author up. Because although Steve is presented as a fully realized character, largely through his grief and the self-comforting routines that have sustained him, nobody else in this book is. Adam, admittedly self-conscious and awkward around his father, is absent for much of the book, and even in his brief interactions with his spouse and father, we learn little else about him. Amy, his wife, is depicted as an almost superhero with a loving heart, but we never get a sense of why she does what she does (or, really, why she married Adam, beyond a quick pro forma explanation). Only Amy’s current client – the sexually voracious, fearless, and otherwise quite charming Rosie – comes across as anything like fleshed out, leaving one with the impression that Osman has met similar celebrity authors during his Thursday Murder Club tours who have left with strong impressions. All in all, the result is an extended character sketch, or perhaps a workup for another movie.

That’s not to say We Solve Murders is bad. It’s a fun, light read. Considering its author’s fame, it will also undoubtedly be successful and continue as a series. That said, this reader hopes that in Steve and Amy’s next outing, the author takes a little more time to delve into his characters and give us something like what we have come to love in his previous books.

Clea Simon is the Somerville-based novelist, most recently of Bad Boy Beat.