What Osman is good at, he is still good at. The three of them talk to each other like people who have known each other long enough to be rude, and the dialogue does most of the work of moving the thing along. The mystery has real twists in it and the red herrings are laid properly. And the villains stay on the right side of grim: they are people behaving badly for reasons, not psychopaths, which keeps a book about a rising body count from turning into something you would rather not have on in the car.

The reservation is the travel. This is sold as a chase across four countries, and several early reviewers have made the same observation independently: a city can go past in a single conversation. Stockholm happens, Barcelona happens, and neither leaves much behind. The middle stretch tends to confirm what you already worked out rather than move you forward, and more than one person described the plot as wandering. On eleven hours that shows.

The other thing reviewers keep saying is worth taking as information rather than as a complaint. This series is lighter than the Thursday Murder Club, with less underneath the characters and more fizz on top. Coopers Chase had old age and grief in it, and that is what gave the jokes something to sit against. Amy, Steve and Rosie are having a much better time, and if you came to Osman for the melancholy under the comedy you will notice it is not here.

Nicola Walker is the reason to take this one in audio rather than any other way. She read the first book too, so the voices arrive already settled, and her timing on this kind of dry exchange is close to ideal. If you have not met these three, start at We Solve Murders, because the pleasure here is entirely in knowing them already. And if it is the deeper Osman you want, The Thursday Murder Club is where the other series starts and where the comparison everyone keeps drawing comes from.