We Chase Shadows Summary: Plot, Twists & Ending Explained
Introduction To We Chase Shadows Book Summary
A bodyguard is shot dead on the doorstep of a Tuscan villa, and in his pocket sits a note promising his boss is next.
It is signed by Jakob Eriksson, the most feared name in the fake-medication trade.
The problem: nobody in the criminal underworld has ever heard of him.
That impossible signature pulls the We Solve Murders agency into a chase across Italy, Sweden, the USA and Spain in We Chase Shadows, book two of Richard Osman’s globetrotting mystery series.
Retired Met officer Steve Wheeler, his daughter-in-law Amy, and crime novelist Rosie D’Antonio trade Hampshire pub quizzes for drug syndicates, hitmen and airport security footage.
Below you’ll find the full plot, the key players, and how the final twist assembles itself.
TL;DR: One Murder, Two Killers, No Real Eriksson
A fake-vitamin tycoon’s bodyguard is killed with a note signed by a phantom kingpin — and solving the case means proving a murderer never existed.
- The setting: cozy Hampshire village life colliding with Tuscany, Stockholm, Palm Springs and MĂ¡laga.
- The case: three members of a six-man fake-drug syndicate are dead, all blamed on “Jakob Eriksson.”
- The sleuths: Steve Wheeler, Amy Wheeler and Rosie D’Antonio, funded by a bestselling novelist’s chequebook.
- The engine: stolen identities, airport photos, a gardener paid £15 an hour, and a “drowning” in MĂ¡laga back in 2001.
- The payoff: a finale that rewrites the first murder, the mastermind and the motive, three times over.
- The tone: warm, dryly funny and fast, with short chapters and multiple viewpoints.
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Is We Chase Shadows Right for You?
This book suits readers who like cozy mysteries with real body counts and layered cons, rather than a single straightforward whodunit.
The plot moves through five countries, so it fits anyone who enjoys globe-trotting settings alongside classic English village comforts.
- Readers who enjoy ensemble casts, banter, and multiple points of view.
- Fans of puzzle plots where the first solution turns out to be the wrong one.
- Anyone who likes found-family sleuthing teams with older leads finding second chances.
The reading experience is fast: short chapters, frequent location jumps, and reveals stacked close together, with humor threaded through the violence.
We Chase Shadows Summary: The Full Story, Spoilers Included
Spoiler warning: everything below — every twist, death and reveal — is spelled out.
The Body on the Doorstep
Vern Blackwood has built a fortune selling fake vitamins and placebo wellness supplements online from a €15-million villa in Tuscany.
His morning shatters when his bodyguard, Esteban, is shot through the head and left on the doorstep.
In Esteban’s pocket is a note promising Vern is next, signed “Jakob Eriksson.”
Panicked, Vern calls We Solve Murders — the agency bankrolled by crime novelist Rosie D’Antonio and run by retired Met officer Steve Wheeler and his daughter-in-law Amy, with office manager Felicity Woollaston holding the fort back home.
The three fly out on Rosie’s private jet.
Vern’s explanation: five years earlier, six illegal pharmaceutical dealers met in Las Vegas to carve up the world’s fake-medication market.
Three are now dead, and Vern is convinced Eriksson has come for him.
He also nudges the team toward two other leads — syndicate member Tommy Griffin in Palm Springs, and his own ex-wife, Georgie Glazier.
Bodyguards, Beatings and a Second Corpse
Amy stays at the villa to work the crime scene and question the remaining bodyguards, Korbin and Lee.
Steve and Rosie fly to Barcelona to brief Interpol inspector Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuéllar, then on to Hertfordshire to meet Georgie — who looks like an innocent retiree painting plant pots and selling LED face masks, though she co-founded the supplement business with Vern decades ago.
The danger reaches England.
Steve’s best friend, Tony Taylor, is beaten in a Lymington alley by a bleached-blond hitman carrying a message: tell Vern to stop looking for Jakob Eriksson.
In Tuscany, Korbin tells Amy he has proof about who didn’t kill Esteban, and asks her to meet at his cottage at 9 p.m. She arrives to find him stabbed through the chest.
The Hunt Goes Global
Ernesto sends airport security photos of “Eriksson” in Bratislava, Helsinki and Minsk.
Scanning them, Steve and Rosie spot Korbin standing beside him in all three cities.
With two bodyguards dead, Vern is moved to Rosie’s moated castle in Dorset.
The leads multiply. In Stockholm, fearsome crime boss Sara Lindstrat says no one in Swedish crime has heard of Jakob Eriksson — the identity is borrowed.
In Palm Springs, Tommy Griffin adds that the man speaks with an English accent.
In London, retired Met researcher Dorothy Gunn matches an English fake-drug seller who vanished around 2001: Connor “Baldy” Brooks, reported drowned in MĂ¡laga.
At the local Bridge and Whist Club, expats Mike and Sue confirm Brooks faked his death with help from his old friend Vern Blackwood.
Soon after, Griffin is killed by a sniper’s rifle, and US Customs officer Carlos Moss confirms “Eriksson” flew into Palm Springs just before the shot.
Between airports, Steve still talks to his late wife, Debbie, and the case keeps circling one idea — a trade built on placebo pills and a killer built out of thin air.
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Blood at the Castle
Armed with the Brooks connection, the team confronts Vern. Meanwhile, Felicity — furious about Tony’s beating — quietly buys a handgun in Portsmouth.
Gunshots ring out on the castle grounds. The bleached-blond hitman, Mark Drury, is found shot dead in the brush, and Vern Blackwood is found murdered inside the castle itself.
Staying behind with Lee, Amy cracks the original murder. Esteban had framed an innocent cleaner, Maria, after a breakup; when Lee confronted him, his gun went off. Lee planted a fake “Jakob Eriksson” note on the body to hide what happened and protect Maria.
Rosie and Ernesto trace the dead hitman’s hotel reservation to The Hunter’s Rest, where Steve corners a bald man escaping down a fire escape into a garden maze.
Back at the office, Felicity arrives waving her gun, and a scuffle with Rosie ends with the weapon discharging into Rosie’s shoulder.
The Man Who Wasn’t Eriksson
Flashbacks to MĂ¡laga in 2001 fill in the backstory as Steve re-examines the airport photographs — including a corner previously covered by his cat, Trouble.
The captured man is neither Connor Brooks nor a mastermind. He is Eric Jacobs, a 72-year-old retired gardener from Haywards Heath, paid £15 an hour to be photographed at international airports.
Steve races to a nearby bird hide where Ernesto is about to execute the old man, and shoots the inspector in the leg. The final act of We Chase Shadows then stacks its reveals three deep.
Vern Blackwood was the phantom all along. In 2001, he didn’t help Connor Brooks disappear — he murdered him and buried him on convent property, then invented “Jakob Eriksson” as a fictional shadow rival: a name to pin murders on while Vern absorbed his rivals’ markets and owned both sides of the trade.
Ernesto ran his own scheme. Searching Vern’s villa while the team was in Palm Springs, he found the hidden millions, pieced the plot together, and hired Mark Drury to kill Korbin, Griffin and Vern.
He then killed Drury and planned to frame the harmless gardener for everything.
How It All Ends
Rosie recovers from the shoulder wound and turns the media frenzy into sales: her novel And the Devil Blinked First hits Number One. She fires her manager Elspeth and promotes Felicity to literary manager.
Ernesto is escorted back to Spain by officer Clara to stand trial. Eric Jacobs is cleared — and Georgie Glazier hands him £500,000, her half of Vern’s secret stash, enough for a Kent retirement village with allotments.
Amy and her husband Adam celebrate their seventh anniversary in Lanzarote. Steve heads home to his marigolds, his cat, and the quiet he missed.
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Who’s Who in the Case
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Steve Wheeler | Retired Met police officer of 25 years, living in Axley, Hampshire, who co-runs the We Solve Murders agency. |
| Amy Wheeler | Steve’s daughter-in-law, a former close-protection officer who handles the agency’s fieldwork. |
| Rosie D’Antonio | Multi-million-selling crime novelist who funds the agency. |
| Felicity Woollaston | The agency’s office manager and a former theatrical agent. |
| Vern Blackwood | British tycoon selling fake vitamins and placebo wellness products from a Tuscan villa. |
| Esteban | Vern’s bodyguard in Tuscany, whose murder opens the case. |
| Korbin | Vern’s opera-loving German bodyguard. |
| Lee | Vern’s bodyguard, a former British soldier with a Chelsea FC tattoo. |
| Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuéllar | Spanish Interpol inspector in Barcelona who assists the investigation. |
| Eric Jacobs | A 72-year-old retired gardener from Haywards Heath who runs EJ Gardening Services. |
| Connor “Baldy” Brooks | British mail-order fraudster who reportedly drowned in MĂ¡laga in 2001. |
| Georgie Glazier | Vern’s ex-wife in Hertfordshire and co-founder of the supplement business. |
| Tommy Griffin | Palm Springs member of the fake-drug syndicate who sells counterfeit Viagra. |
| Mark Drury | A bleached-blond hitman with an eagle neck tattoo. |
| Tony Taylor | Steve’s best friend in Axley and a pub quiz regular. |
| Sara Lindstrat | Notorious Swedish criminal boss consulted in Stockholm. |
| Dorothy Gunn | Retired Met chief research officer who digs through old records. |
| Trouble | Steve’s ginger cat. |
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We Chase Shadows at a Glance
| Element | Details |
|---|---|
| Genre & Subgenre | Cozy mystery and comic crime fiction; private-investigator mystery with a globe-trotting sleuth angle |
| Series | Book 2 of the We Solve Murders series |
| Core Narrative Tropes | Amateur sleuth team; shadowy mastermind; fake rival / false flag; found family; ex-cop and ex-military duo |
| Tone & Atmosphere | Witty, warm and dryly British; village pub life set against Tuscan villas, Stockholm rooftops and Palm Springs heat |
| Primary Conflict | Unmasking “Jakob Eriksson” and stopping the murders inside a fake-pharmaceutical syndicate |
| Pacing Style | Fast and episodic; short multi-POV chapters hopping between countries |
| Publisher & Date | Pamela Dorman Books, September 15, 2026 |
| Print Length | 352 pages |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8217060399 |
| Book Structure | 71 chapters across 5 parts, plus MĂ¡laga 2001 flashbacks and an epilogue |
| Author Background | Richard Osman, British TV presenter turned novelist, creator of the record-breaking Thursday Murder Club series |
Books Like We Chase Shadows
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman — Osman’s flagship series about four retirees solving cold cases, sharing the same warm humor, sharp characterization and puzzle-box plotting.
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman — the first book in this series, introducing Steve, Amy and Rosie and their original globetrotting case.
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood — an eccentric trio of amateur sleuths unravels murders in a picturesque English town with comparable wit.
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano — fast comedic crime featuring an unlikely protagonist, contract killers and fake identities.
The Appeal by Janice Hallett — a clever British mystery built on multi-perspective storytelling, eccentric local characters and layered twists.
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