The valet Who Died Twice by Richard Osman. Photograph: Penguin Since then, barely four hardback adult novels have sold more in their inaugural week on shelves : Dan Brown ’ s The Lost Symbol ( 550,946 sold in its first workweek ) and Inferno ( 228,961 ), JK Rowling ’ s The Casual Vacancy ( 124,603 ), and the late Harper Lee ’ s Go Set a Watchman ( 168,455 ). last workweek, Sally Rooney ’ randomness one-third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You topped the UK ’ s charts with sales of 46,065 copies. This week, Rooney ’ s novel sits at No 4 in the overall charts, with 19,782 copies sold. Bob Mortimer ’ randomness And Away… sits behind Osman in second seat, having sold 42,094 copies. Osman besides topped the paperback charts last workweek with The Thursday Murder Club, which sold 23,966 copies final week. The last time an author scored a double fabrication chart No 1 was in March 2017, when James Patterson ’ s 16th Seduction topped the hardback fiction chart and Never Never topped the paperbacks list. The Thursday Murder Club has sold more than one million copies since it was published in September concluding year, and has spent 45 weeks at the acme of the fabrication best seller lists.
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Osman said he was “ so enormously thrilled ” at the sales. “ This is beyond our wildest predictions. My sexual love and thanks to all the readers, all the amazing booksellers and to Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron, ” said the writer and Pointless co-host. “ It ’ s fantastic to see how many people have fallen in love with Richard ’ s fabulous Thursday Murder Club and just couldn ’ t wait to read the adjacent installation, ” said his publisher Joanna Prior, managing director of Penguin General. “ The response to these characters and the crimes they solve from readers around the world has been extraordinary and it has been a rejoice to work with retailers to make issue week such a adult here and now for everyone to parcel in. ” The man Who Died Twice opens as the four members of the Thursday Murder Club consider “ the cold case of a Hastings newsagent who murdered an intruder with a crossbow ”. Elizabeth, however, is distracted : she has received a letter from an old acquaintance who needs her assistant, and she and her friends soon find the bodies mounting up. Reviewing it in the Guardian, Lynne Truss found that “ a sense of hazard is entirely absent ”, but added that “ if you are glad to let other pens dwell on guilt and misery, you can relax and enjoy this fresh, which is wonderfully entertaining ”. Nielsen Book Research ’ s Philip Stone said that Osman was a “ publish phenomenon ”. “ In late memory we ’ ve seen enormously successful titles inspire long-run trends within crime fiction – Stieg Larsson ’ sulfur achiever leading to a boost for Nordic noir, Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train stimulating the grocery store for psychological thrillers, ” said Stone. “ It will be concern to see whether Osman ’ s success leads to a glut of cosy crime caper print. ”
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At Waterstones, Rooney ’ s Beautiful World was silent topping the charts, narrowly followed by The Man Who Died Twice. But buyer Bea Carvalho predicted that Osman ’ s second base novel would overtake Rooney soon. “ It ’ s pretty good to have two mega fall bestsellers already arrived and outperforming expectations – it ’ s a big start to the fall, ” she said. For Carvalho, Osman ’ s appeal lies in his novels “ treading that balance between chic and accessible therefore brilliantly ”. “ He has such strong solicitation for real fans of the writing style, but besides for people who possibly only normally buy one script a year, ” she said. “ obviously, his profile truly helps to hook those new readers in, but then the fact that it was so effective, and such a ache, shrill part of storytelling in its own right, means that, actually, it became a bit of a viva-voce hit. It could have well been a bite of a celeb script that barely did what it did in workweek one, but the timbre speak for itself and it kept going and has good been absolutely massive. ”