Richard Osman Books in Order

If you love clever cozy mysteries: The Thursday Murder Club → The Man Who Died Twice → The Bullet That Missed → The Last Devil to Die → The Impossible Fortune.
If you want a faster, globetrotting crime caper: We Solve Murders.
If you mainly know him from TV quizzes: The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World → The 100 Most Pointless Arguments in the World → The Very Pointless Quiz Book → The A-Z of Pointless → A Pointless History of the World.
If you just want something light and funny: The World Cup Of Everything → Richard Osman's House of Games.

Richard Osman was born on November 28, 1970, in Billericay, Essex, and grew up in West Sussex as the tall kid who loved quizzes, jokes, and television. Many readers first met him as the deadpan co host of the quiz show Pointless, long before his crime novels started topping charts around the world.

His childhood was not always simple. He and his older brother, musician Mat Osman, were raised mainly by their mother, Brenda, after their father left when Richard was nine. They moved to the Haywards Heath area, where his mum taught and worked hard to keep the family afloat, while Richard soaked up pop culture, football, and any trivia he could get his hands on.

He was born with nystagmus, a visual impairment that makes everything look slightly out of focus, so from an early age he learned to rely on listening and memory more than on reading things off a board or a screen.

At Warden Park School he found his way into broadcasting by contributing to a local BBC Radio Sussex music show on Sunday nights. That led him to study politics and sociology at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met Alexander Armstrong. After graduating in 1992 he went into television production, working first at Hat Trick and later becoming creative director at Endemol UK.

Behind the scenes he helped shape a long list of British panel and game shows. He worked on comedy hits such as 8 Out of 10 Cats and 10 O'Clock Live, co created sitcoms, and learned how to design formats that feel simple and playful on screen even when they are quite intricate underneath.

Pointless was the show that changed everything. Osman pitched the idea while at Endemol, then ended up on screen himself as Armstrong's "pointless friend", reading out obscure answers and needling contestants. Tie in quiz books followed, as did a second quiz, Two Tribes, and later Richard Osman's House of Games, where four celebrities spend a week battling through lovingly odd rounds.

All the while, he was a heavy reader of crime fiction. In his early fifties he finally tried writing his own, working in secret on a novel about amateur sleuths in a retirement village. That book, The Thursday Murder Club, sold in a major publishing auction, became a runaway bestseller, and was later adapted for film.

The Thursday Murder Club series follows four friends at Coopers Chase in Kent, who meet to discuss cold cases and keep finding real murders on their doorstep. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim bring different skills to the table, and the books mix puzzles and jokes with scenes about aging, illness, friendship, and grief. Sequels including The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed, The Last Devil to Die, and The Impossible Fortune have all continued their story.

He did not stop at one fictional world. In 2024 Osman launched a second mystery series, We Solve Murders, about retired police officer Steve Wheeler and his adrenaline loving daughter in law, Amy, who works in private security. The books throw this reluctant duo into a faster, more globe trotting kind of investigation while keeping the warmth, banter, and everyday detail that readers enjoy in his first series.

Away from the page and the studio, Osman lives in London with his wife, actor Ingrid Oliver, and their cats, Liesl and Lottie. He has two grown up children from a previous relationship, loves sport and pub quizzes, and talks openly about living with nystagmus and with food addiction. Whether on television, on his podcast, or in his novels, he tends to return to the same territory: how people connect with each other, especially later in life, and how much mischief and kindness there can still be in the quiet corners of everyday life.