Read an excerpt from We Solve Murders – the first book in the blockbuster new series from the biggest new fiction writer of the decade, Richard Osman
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Penguin Random House SA has shared an excerpt from We Solve Murders by Richard Osman!

Blending the charm of The Thursday Murder Club with a twisty international mystery, Richard Osman returns with a thrilling new series.

Steve Wheeler is enjoying his quiet retirement, filled with pub quizzes and cat cuddles, while his daughter-in-law Amy lives for adrenaline. As a private security officer, Amy is currently on a remote island, guarding a famous author, Rosie D’Antonio – a job that was supposed to be easy.

But when a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer enter the picture, Amy turns to Steve for help.

Can they outsmart their enemies in a high-stakes race around the world?

Read the excerpt:

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Prologue

You must leave as few clues as possible. That’s the only rule.

You have to talk to people sometimes; it’s inevitable. There are orders to be given, shipments to be arranged, people to be killed, etc., etc. You cannot exist in a vacuum, for goodness’ sake.

You need to ring François Loubet? In an absolute emergency? You’ll get a phone with a voice-changer built-in. And, by the way, if it’s not an absolute emergency, you’ll regret ringing very soon.

But most communication is by message or email. High-end criminals are much like millennials in that way.

Everything is encrypted, naturally, but what if the authorities break the code? It happens. A lot of very good criminals are in prison right now because a nerd with a laptop had too much time on their hands. So you must hide as well as you can.

You can hide your IP address – that is very easy. François Loubet’s emails go through a world tour of different locations before being sent. Even a nerd with a laptop would never be able to discover from where they were actually sent.

But everyone’s language leaves a unique signature. A particular use of words, a rhythm, a personality. Someone could read an email, and then read a postcard you sent in 2009 and know for a fact they were sent by the same person. Science, you see. So often the enemy of the honest criminal.

That’s why ChatGPT has been such a godsend.

After writing an email, a text, anything really, you can simply run the whole thing through ChatGPT and it instantly deletes your personality. It flattens you out, irons your creases, washes you away, quirk by quirk, until you disappear.

‘ChatGPT, rewrite this email as a friendly English gentleman, please.’ That is always Loubet’s prompt.

Handy, because if these emails were written in François Loubet’s own language, it would all become much more obvious. Too obvious.

But, as it stands, you might find a thousand emails, but you would still have no way of knowing where François Loubet was, and you would still have no way of knowing who François Loubet is.

You would, of course, know what François Loubet does, but there would be precious little you could do about it.

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