Rosie D’Antonio

A novelist with a thriller-worthy lifestyle

Rosie D’Antonio is an internationally bestselling novelist whose wealth and celebrity are immediately visible in We Solve Murders. She owns the private South Carolina island where Amy Wheeler has been hired to protect her. Her pool is shaped like a swan, and she is perfectly capable of turning a quiet morning beside it into an interrogation about somebody’s appearance and ambitions. Richard Osman describes her in the publisher’s reader guide as an author in the Jackie Collins tradition. Her glamour is part of the joke, but it also establishes somebody used to getting attention and making arrangements.

Why Amy is guarding her

Rosie has offended a dangerous Russian oligarch through her fiction and needs close protection. Amy’s job is to keep her safe, not to supply the novelist with another entertaining adventure. Rosie does not make that distinction easy. She is curious, theatrical and attracted to excitement, while Amy remains professionally alert. The island opening makes their difference tangible: Rosie floats in the pool and asks questions; Amy sits upright with her gun nearby. Their conversation is not only about danger. Rosie is interested in Amy’s confidence and determined to draw more personality out of the restrained woman beside her.

Money, style and refusing a quiet retirement

Rosie’s clothes, travel and expensive conveniences belong to the larger-than-life persona. Osman’s interview singles out leopard print and shoulder pads, as well as the helicopter and private jet that separate her lifestyle from his own. She is not embarrassed by success or inclined to make herself smaller to fit somebody else’s expectations. That attitude creates a lively counterpart to Steve’s preference for a modest routine. Her resources can make an international journey possible, but her appetite for experience is just as important to the story’s energy. She treats new people and situations as things to engage with, not merely hazards to avoid.

Steve and an unexpected friendship

Steve Wheeler begins from a world of village routines, pub quizzes and a cat. Rosie belongs to a world of celebrity, costly travel and dramatic possibilities. Their friendship is enjoyable because the apparent mismatch does not prevent them from liking one another. He can offer grounded judgement and the experience of an investigator; she can offer energy, generosity and the means to keep moving. Amy connects them, but the relationship becomes a pleasure in its own right. The trio’s warm company keeps the globe-trotting thriller from becoming only a series of escapes and confrontations.

Where to start and why she matters

Start with We Solve Murders for the poolside introduction and the first formation of the trio. Continue with We Chase Shadows for their second international mystery. Rosie is more than the wealthy client who funds the transport. Her confidence changes the atmosphere of a scene, and her interest in other people creates room for humour alongside the danger. The novelist’s appetite for stories also suits a mystery full of identities, appearances and competing accounts. Readers who enjoy Osman’s older characters should find plenty to like in Rosie and Steve, while Amy adds professional action skills that make this series distinct from the Coopers Chase books.

Read the books and extracts

Start with We Solve Murders. Our reading order follows the novels’ publication sequence. The publisher’s extracts below let you meet the characters in Osman’s own prose; review and cast links offer further background.

• We Solve Murders: the island opening
• Richard Osman on Rosie: publisher’s interview