When Richard Osman published his inaugural Thursday Murder Club novel in the autumn of 2020, it proved the perfect pick-me-up for a nation mired in the pandemic blues. Five years and millions of book sales on, the latest instalment \u2013 the fifth in the series \u2013 has an equally vital function: to cheer up those of us who have just sat through the clodhopping Netflix adaptation<\/a> of the first book.<\/p>\n Although the film boasts a blue-chip quartet of geriatric thespians as Osman\u2019s crime-busting pensioners Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, it doesn\u2019t have half the charm and liveliness of the novels \u2013 nor the emotional impact. On the page, the superannuated sleuths defy the elements of caricature to possess a vibrancy that makes you invested in their triumphs and tribulations, large or small.<\/p>\n The result is that their adventures linger in the memory \u2013 more so than We Solve Murders, the globe-trotting crime caper Osman published last year while taking a break from the Club: though a highly entertaining read, it seems disposable in retrospect. So far, at least, Osman and the Thursday Murder Club are both better in combination than apart.<\/p>\n Celia Imrie, Sir Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan star in Netflix\u2019s adaptation – Giles Keyte\/Netflix<\/p>\n The Impossible Fortune begins with an explanation of what the Murder Clubbers have been doing with their year off: not much, it transpires, as Elizabeth has been poleaxed by grief following a tragic loss \u2013 and, as Ron observes, \u201cthe force of Elizabeth\u2019s personality is the glue that binds [the] gang together\u201d.<\/p>\n But her little grey cells splutter back into life when, attending the wedding of Joyce\u2019s daughter Joanna, she\u2019s approached by one of the guests, who has been advised of her prodigious ratiocinative skills and wants her to find out who placed a bomb under his car that morning. This proves to be one of Osman\u2019s more cleverly plotted whodunnits, with bonus brainteasers in the form of cunning codes to crack: it\u2019s all the pleasure of Dan Brown, but without prose that zaps your will to live.<\/p>\n A sub-plot involves Ron\u2019s daughter giving her violent gangster husband Danny the elbow, with the result that he vows to take murderous revenge against her family. It\u2019s part of Osman\u2019s charm that his portrayal of Danny, rendered in sub-Martina Cole clich\u00e9s, is entirely unconvincing. He has said before that his books should not be described as \u201ccosy crime\u201d because they contain such violent characters and storylines: but in fact what he does, so enjoyably, is to render that macho gangster world ridiculous by infusing it with his cosy sensibility.<\/p>\n Netflix<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that the novels can\u2019t get you in the gut at times: the storyline about the deterioration of Elizabeth\u2019s dementia-addled husband Stephen has progressed over the series from poignant to harrowing. That thread was brought to a definitive end in the last book, however, and The Impossible Fortune is touching in a quieter way.<\/p>\n Osman has chosen to place Joyce\u2019s difficult relationship with her daughter Joanna, previously touched on in brief snippets, at the heart of this book, resulting in a funny-sad depiction of a dysfunctional dynamic that is one of the best things he has done. In fact, it is becoming ever clearer that the slightly scatty but emotionally intelligent Joyce is Osman\u2019s finest creation: her name at the top of one of those chapters comprising her first-person ramblings is a sure guarantee of a couple of pages of pure pleasure.<\/p>\n Elsewhere Osman provides such reader-pleasing elements as jokes about Flog It! and vigilante attacks on people who play videos loudly in public places. But what makes his books supremely irresistible is his vision of old age \u2013 often difficult, yes, but also an opportunity to find your tribe and do something worthwhile with them: as Elizabeth notes, though she is no longer as agile and razor-witted as she once was, \u201cshe doesn\u2019t need to be. Because she is now part of a team.\u201d<\/p>\n As we turn the pages and realise we are five years closer to inhabiting our own equivalent of Coopers Chase retirement village than when we started reading the series, we all hope one day to be part of such a team. In the meantime, such is Osman\u2019s skill that as we read, we feel as if we already are.<\/p>\n The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman is published by Viking at \u00a322. To order your copy for \u00a318.99, call 0330 173 5030 or visit Telegraph Books<\/a><\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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