The Man Who Died Twice is the second mystery in Richard Osmand’s Thursday Murder Club series. Much like the first novel, this is a very pleasant read. The characters are original and interesting and the mystery itself is fun to follow along. For those who enjoy the British cozy and are familiar with Osman’s first mystery The Thursday Murder Club, this one is a little bit more graphic.
Douglas, the ex-husband of former MI5 agent and Coopers Chase resident Elizabeth is in hiding and under MI5 protection at Coopers Chase after stealing some twenty million worth of diamonds from a local crime kingpin named Martin Lomax. It is a bit hard to believe MI5 would hide a man in the same region as the man looking for him but there you go. Douglas is protected by an agent named Poppy who makes for a very useless waitress in the residence dining hall. While in hiding Douglas is going through a moral and existential crisis which makes him that much more interesting a character.
A secondary story has Ibrahim, one of the Thursday Murder Club members, get mugged and Elizabeth using her MI5 contacts to find out who did it. There is an attempt on Douglas’ life. Also, the local plods, Donna and Chris, are trying to take down the local drug queenpin.
Things take a turn for the worse about halfway through Richard Osmand’s The Man Who Died Twice. Or do they?
Things do drag on a bit in this Osmand mystery novel but not enough to make you want to quit reading. Let’s just say a few of one character’s entries though charming are kind of pointless and that there are a couple too many hesitations before the grand finale. The finale itself is very good but you must have paid close attention to some of the minutia of the story to really get all a reader can out of it.
Having seen the movie version of The Thursday Murder Club before reading the mystery, I must say I enjoyed the second Richard Osmand thriller in the series better.
The Man Who Died Twice
Richard Osmand
Penguin Books 2022
400 pages
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