Octogenarians Can Solves Murders Too

The Impossible Fortune
By Richard Osman
Pamala Dorman Books/Viking, 355 pp., $30

There’s a lot of downright intense stuff going on in our culture and politics just now, some of it encouraging, others of it downright alarming. Conflict is at a boil. TAS readers are an engaged bunch, and we keep up better than most. But even we need a break from the battle now and then. What better therapeutic R&R than a well-wrought detective story with charming and amusing characters.

Comes now Richard Osman with just the thing — another adventure with the wildly popular Thursday Murder Club. The Club is a quartet of British pensioners operating out of an upscale retirement community in Kent who’ve forsaken bingo, shuffle board, book clubs, afternoon soaps, and putzing around in the garden in favor of the more taxing and dangerous but exhilarating business of solving murders. Not an age-appropriate hobby perhaps — bad guys (and gals) can be hazardous to one’s health — but one that has delighted millions of readers since the first book in 2020.

The Thursday stories are firmly in the English cozy mystery tradition, i.e. mysteries with a minimum of gore, violence, car chases, fist fights, sex, or swearing. Think Miss Marple and the body in the library. But while staying within this form, Osman’s stories can still give us sharp and often amusing observations on the mores of our day and the tragedies, hard choices, and expectations of our lives.

Just because a mystery is a cozy and unrealistic doesn’t mean it can’t be intelligently done. Osman’s cozies are cozies with an edge. The four wrinklies (I can us this term as I’m of their vintage) and their associates engage and outwit characters not found in Jane Marple’s St. Mary Mead. Jane would be way out of her league in dealing with the drug dealers, mafiasos, hit men, forgers, and fraudsters of various stripes, as well as the odd garden variety murderer the Thursday irregulars are called on to sort out.

The Impossible Fortune is the fifth case for the amateur oldies, and like its four predecessors it consistently pleases on all levels. The plot is complex and proceeds with a quick pace, featuring red herrings, misdirections, multiple suspects, and unexpected twists. Charm, humor, and above all humanity abound as the crew outwits the villains once again. But whodunit, how and why aside, the heart of the Thursday stories are the characters and how they develop and evolve through the series.

And this calls for a caveat.(Caveats always seem to be in season.) The characters — the heart of the business with the Thursday bunch — can be baffling to those who don’t know their backgrounds. There are four main Thursday characters and several recurring peripherals, all with revealing back-stories that make their current behavior understandable. Impossible Fortune can be read as a stand-alone for newcomers to the series. But greater understanding and pleasure comes from reading the books in order.

The four regulars, as disparate as they are unlikely, are Elizabeth, a retired spy and usually the leader of the pack; Ron, a former union organizer with Marxist tendencies; Ibrahim, a semi-retired and over intellectual psychiatrist; and Joyce, a retired nurse who likes to bake and is everyone’s favorite aunt. While these characters have each either reached 80 or are staring down the barrel of it, Osman does not make them cutesy or twee. They punch above their investigative weight, but not without dealing with the losses, disappointments, and indignities of the golden years. They subscribe to the philosophy that it’s better to wear out than to rust out. And it’s fun watching them do so, even with the various hitches in their get-alongs.

The action in this one sets up in this wise: It’s been a quiet year at Cooper’s Chase while Elizabeth grieves the death of her husband Stephen, who had been suffering from dementia. But as the story opens with the wedding of Joyce’s middle-aged daughter, the best man tells Elizabeth he fears for his life. In short order the best man disappears, his business partner dies from a car bomb, and the Thursday crew is at general quarters again.

The prize, which various unsavory and dangerous characters pursue in this one is Bitcoin (which I still don’t understand), worth hundreds of millions of pounds, which is locked away in an unorthodox kind of cold storage. Or is it? This well constructed plot demonstrates once again Osman’s skill at making the unlikely seamless.

Our lives these days can be cluttered and challenging, with reading time at a premium. So we should only spend those precious reading hours under the lamp with writers who deliver entertainment, humor, and insights. Not every writer in the mystery section of your book store delivers any of these. Richard Osman delivers all three. And the Thursday Murder Club is his vehicle and his triumph. So if you’ve read the latest The American Spectator website, go ahead and treat yourself.

READ MORE from Larry Thornberry:

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