We Chase Shadows

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Richard Osman brings his We Solve Murders team back on 10 September 2026, and Penguin has again handed the audio to Nicola Walker. We Chase Shadows runs eleven hours, unabridged, and it is on Audible to pre-order now. This page goes up before release day, so what follows is a guide to what is coming rather than a verdict on the finished recording.

The pre-orders alone have pushed it inside the top 25 of the entire Audible chart, which tells you how much appetite there is for a second outing with Amy, Rosie and Steve.

A body on the steps of an Italian villa

The setup, in Penguin's own summary, is pure Osman. At sunrise, high in the Italian hills, a body turns up on the steps of a beautiful private villa, with a threatening note on it signed by a mystery man. Back at We Solve Murders HQ, Amy, Rosie and Steve leap at the chance to take it on as their first proper case, even though the new client seems to have his own reasons for avoiding the police.

From there the suspect list grows instead of shrinking. Sweden's most wanted criminal, a canny ex-wife and a fierce business rival all come into view, and the murderer keeps slipping away. The chase runs between Italy and Palm Springs, by way of Barcelona and Steve's village pub, and the danger travels closer to home as it goes.

Nicola Walker reads it again

Walker narrated We Solve Murders when it arrived in September 2024 and she is back for this one. That continuity matters in this series, because so much of the comedy sits in the gap between Steve's flat refusals and Amy's momentum, and Walker plays both without appearing to change gear.

Eleven hours is only about half an hour longer than the first book, so the shape should feel familiar. Short chapters, a great deal of dialogue and a plot that keeps moving between locations. For a listener that is a long weekend rather than a month of commutes.

Where it sits next to the Thursday Murder Club

We Solve Murders was Osman's move away from Coopers Chase, swapping a retirement village for private security work and international travel. The Thursday Murder Club has carried on separately since, so nobody needs to worry that this replaced it. These are two series running in parallel.

What carries over is the tone. Osman writes crime that is warm rather than bleak, where the pleasure is in the company as much as the puzzle, and that translates unusually well to audio. It is a large part of why his books climb the Audible chart faster than most bestsellers, and why this one was near the top of it before a single listener had heard it.

We Chase Shadows lands on 10 September 2026, eleven hours, read by Nicola Walker for Penguin. Everything about the setup points to more of what worked the first time, only with a bigger map. If you have already been through We Solve Murders, the pre-order is an easy call. If you have not, there is still time to fix that before this one arrives.

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