To No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Osman, the sweetest word in the English language is normal.

“And by normal, I suppose I mean home, and by home, I suppose I mean safe,” says Osman, from the safety of his study in London via Zoom. “So I think that’s probably the greatest word in the English language, isn’t it?”

And what would be the most depressing word in the English language, then?

“Party,” he says, without missing a beat.

When you are the author of not one but two internationally bestselling mystery series—when one of your books was made into a film starring Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley, directed by Chris Columbus, with 69 million views in the second half of 2025 alone—there are heaps of parties to attend, including many in your honor. As the author of the Thursday Murder Club and We Solve Murders series, Osman is widely celebrated. The former series features five titles and counting, and the latter became a series this fall: Book 2, We Chase Shadows (Pamela Dorman Books/Viking), arrived stateside Sept. 15.

“If I could have three,” Osman continues, on the subject of hateful words, “it’s party this evening. Listen, I go to plenty of them, and you always have fun, but just the idea that you’re going to have to go out, and that you don’t know exactly who’s going to be there or how you’re going to get home…”

What Osman does not know (and I don’t mention) is that we once attended the same party. And at that party, it was impossible to tell he’d rather be anywhere else, so graciously did he receive his fellow guests. The former TV producer and presenter is famously tall, 6 feet, 7 inches, so he’s easy to spot across a crowded room; but the only thing that makes him unapproachable is the throng of admirers.

Partygoers await a chance to speak with Osman the way readers anticipate his next novel: avidly. Luckily, he manages to churn out one top-tier mystery per year—switching off now between Thursday Murder Club and We Solve Murders. He writes in his study, on the same computer he’s using for this interview, in two-hour sessions. He aims for 1,500 words per day, which is about a chapter, give or take. He favors short chapters and believes readers do, too.

“Quite often, when you’re talking to people about your books—I’m talking about We Chase Shadows at the moment—you’re in the middle of your next book while you’re doing it,” he says. “So your brain has to go back to the other characters. And the book I’m in the middle of at the moment—I say middle, but I’m not really anywhere near the middle—is the new Thursday Murder Club book, which will be out in 2027.”

Any clues?

“As always, I don’t have a plot,” he says. “I just sit down and, you know, wind up my characters and let them go and see where they take me.”

He won’t say more. But surely, he’ll share a little insight into his latest published work—we’re back to We Chase Shadows now—in which the old crew returns, in fine fettle, to confront the curious case of a corpse dumped on the steps of a beautiful Tuscan villa. I’m speaking, of course, of the unforgettable crime-fighting trio consisting of bestselling novelist Rosie D’Antonio (“sort of a Jackie Collins type,” per Osman); close protection officer Amy Wheeler, who’s always up for a high-octane globe-trotting adventure; and Amy’s retired police officer father-in-law, Steve, who’d much prefer to stay home with a cup of tea. To Steve, the sweetest word in the English language is…normal.

“I think Steve shares a lot of my DNA,” Osman confesses. “I am a homebody, and he does spend a lot of his time talking about the correct directions between any two points in an atlas, which would also be me. And I love a pub quiz as well. But there’s a bit of me in everyone, and that’s the point of writing. It’s no use pretending that these characters come from nowhere. They’re all bits of your psyche. And it’s lovely to write about Rosie, for example, because she gets to be in the book world, which is a world I can hopefully write about with some authority.”

What are the essential elements of a good mystery? “My view is the same as it’s always been, which is a mystery has to have characters,” he says. “I don’t really care what else it has. Of course, listen—let’s murder someone and let’s work out who did it—but there’s a billion different ways of doing that, and no one should ever tell you which way to do it. Anyone who loves crime fiction, as I do, knows that people are telling such completely different stories within the framework of someone is murdered.”

(Side note: Are any three words in the English language sweeter to a lover of mysteries?)

“Without characters that you at least identify with, either for good or for ill, there is zero jeopardy at all,” he continues. “There’s also not the fun of the journey. You’ve got to be entertained along the way. That’s the trick of the thing—not what happens in a novel, but why do I care what happens in a novel? And it’s always, always, always character. So don’t let anyone ever tell you that a murder mystery has to have X, Y, or Z, or a crime novel has to have X, Y, or Z. Write it about your world, write it about the stuff that you understand and you know, and stuff you know that speaks to you, but make sure that we care what happens. And why do we care? It’s always the characters. It’s never, Oh, here’s some nuclear bomb pointed at New York. It’s, Do I care about this person who woke up on Monday morning and faced this issue? That, I would say, is the only thing you need.”

The only thing I need Osman to tell me—the last thing I really must know—is who he’d cast in an all-author version of The Traitors. (For those who haven’t had the pleasure, it’s the hit reality TV competition set in a Scottish castle, where players must deduce who among them are anonymous killers, bumping off the Faithful players one by one. Osman declined an invitation to appear on the show, as producers could not guarantee that he would play a Traitor.)

Among his picks are Stephen King, Lee Child, Ann Patchett, Bonnie Garmus, and, if we’re raising the dead, Patricia Highsmith.

“It would be a really, really good idea, wouldn’t it?” Osman says of an all-authors season of Traitors. “Someone should do it one day, at a book festival, a very short version. But again, I wouldn’t want to do it unless I could be a Traitor.”

If Osman were a Traitor, no one would be safe. But it’d be one hell of a party.

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.