What Richard Osman Should Read Before Writing His Next Bestseller

Richard Osman has performed a minor miracle. He's persuaded millions of people that retirement villages are considerably more exciting than most action films. That's no small achievement. Most of us associate retirement with gardening, sensible jumpers and wondering whether the dishwasher has finished. Osman looked at the same demographic and thought, 'What if they solved murders instead?'

That ability to see ordinary life from an unexpected angle is precisely why I'd quietly leave John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold on his desk.

Not because Osman writes spy novels. He doesn't. But because le Carré understood something that every great storyteller eventually discovers: people are rarely what they first appear to be.

The most interesting character in the room is seldom the loudest one. The quiet neighbour who always returns your bins. The retired accountant who remembers every conversation from 1987. The volunteer librarian who casually mentions they once negotiated with the Kremlin.

Good fiction — and good conversation — depends on looking twice. Le Carré filled his novels with ambiguity. Heroes made mistakes. Villains occasionally displayed decency. The truth usually arrived wearing a disguise.

That's refreshingly realistic. Modern life encourages snap judgements. We scroll, skim and decide within seconds. Books insist on patience. They quietly whisper, 'Perhaps there's another chapter to this person.'

Commuters understand this better than most. Spend enough mornings on the same train and the strangers around you gradually become familiar. The woman with the enormous headphones is always reading Victorian poetry. The man in the expensive suit secretly loves crossword puzzles. The teenager everyone assumes is on social media is painstakingly learning Mandarin.

Everyone has an unseen story. The best writers simply notice it first. Perhaps that's why Osman's novels feel so comforting. They don't celebrate extraordinary people. They reveal the extraordinary hiding inside apparently ordinary lives.