TAKE a bow, Richard Osman and Mike Craven.

According to managers at Cumbria’s library service, these two increasingly popular crime writers – whose contrasting styles are as distinctive as they are successful – are firm favourites with local readers.

Craven, a Carlisle born former probation officer who quit that career to become a full-time writer in 2015, continues to take the world of crime fiction by storm, creating darkly compelling stories, perfect for TV adapation.

Meanwhile Osman, the co-presenter of the hit BBC One’s quiz show Pointless, has also risen to become a crime fiction phenomenon.

Figures released in response to a News & Star Freedom of Information request confirm that  Osman’s novels have been requested more than any other by Cumbrian library service members.

His novels– The Man Who Died Twice, The Thursday Murder Club and The Bullet That Missed – have been requested in Cumbria more than any other book. In recent years, the novels were asked for 681 times by local library users.

Osman is among a handful of authors whose work was repeatedly requested by the local library regulars. The list includes no fewer than five novels by Craven, whose work has been widely acclaimed.

Craven's novels - The Botanist, The Puppet Show, The Curator, Black Summer and Dead Ground - were requested more than 400 times by readers, making them the most sought after books in Cumbria's library service.

He and Osman stand tall among several giants in the pantheon of crime writing, with the county’s 40 most requested books including novels by the likes of Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Robert Harris and Ann Cleeves.

There was also an honourable mention for Cumbrian broadcaster and cultural icon Melvyn Bragg, whose book Back in the Day was the 24th most requested  book.

Publicity material describes it as Bragg’s “first ever memoir, an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, vividly evoking a vanished world."

Library officials have also provided a league table for the most taken out books in the years since 2017 across all of its Cumbrian library branches. Top of the list is Lee Child’s thriller Past Tense, featuring the fictional US former military cop Jack Reacher in what the publisher says is a “nail-biting, hair-raising, ticking timebomb of an adventure.”

Cumbrian readers checked out the novel 628 times between November, 2017, and November last year.

Child’s The Midnight Line was the third most borrowed book, taken out 563 times. His novels No Middle Name, Blue Moon and Night School are also featured in the 25 most borrowed books across Cumbrian libraries.

Second place went to Michael Connelly for Two Kinds of Truth, a novel by the former Los Angeles Times crime reporter.

It’s a thriller set in the US, featuring the fictional and troubled soldier-turned-detective Harry Bosch. Among the other books in the county’s 40 most borrowed books are:

* Now We are Dead by Stuart MacBride

* Don’t Let Go by Harlen Coben

* An Unsuitable Match by Joanna Trollope

* Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin

* The Rooster Bar by John Grisham.

* And How to Stop Time by Matt Haig.

In 2019, Craven’s writing was honoured when he won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of the year. Previous winners include John le Carré, Ruth Rendell, Dick Francis, Colin Dexter, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin.

His novel The Puppet Show, which features Lake District stone circles, was described by the judges as an “engrossing tale”, highlighting “the wonderfully innocent and quite brilliant data analyst Tilly Bradshaw”.