The Impossible Fortune
Richard Osman
(Viking Penguin)
On the surface, Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club mysteries are exuberant capers in which dastardly crimes are solved by a quartet of mismatched retirees who bicker like toddlers but who would, quite literally, lay down their lives for each other. Beneath the deadpan humour, cunning twists and malice aplenty, however, lie ingenious observations that expose the very heart of humanity.
The Impossible Fortune is number five in this series. It is perhaps the most insightful yet, as well as an enormous amount of fun. The fabulous four from Cooper’s Chase — ex-MI6 spy Elizabeth, trade unionist Ron, psychotherapist Ibrahim and former nurse Joyce — are drawn into a tangle of carnage and cryptocurrency seemingly impossible to unravel. At the same time, each is beset by personal events: ageing, loss, parenting, loneliness ... all the emotional hurdles every human has to stumble over at some point in life.
Incidentally, the members of the Thursday Murder Club could almost be the Golden Girls, were this a retro US sitcom based in Miami instead of contemporary crime fiction set in a posh English countryside retirement home. Osman’s Joyce is certainly a British doppelgänger for ditsy Rose, who was played by the late Betty White. Chilly, practical Elizabeth would be Dorothy and Ron would be raunchy Blanche, except instead of eating men for breakfast as she did, he’d down a pint of piggish plutocrat for lunch. That leaves Sophia as Ibrahim, not a bad fit for the scholarly peacemaker who is often unwittingly wise.
Leaving aside the convoluted, brain-stimulating plot, much of the joy of this book is in its exploration of human mysteries. Take Joyce’s daughter Joanna’s musings on mother-child relationships as an example:
“Why does she always push her mum away? There’s something about that relationship, something about being a child, and the need of a child to be an individual, to be something more than the things she’s been taught and the way she’s been raised. The need to somehow teach a lesson to the person who has taught her so many lessons? Joyce’s love for her is unconditional; Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even.”
If an author can be considered parent to the characters he creates, Osman’s unconditional love for his children is abundantly evident. He gently lets them mess up, cause harm and, sometimes, find redemption. They are real, flawed, complicated humans who embody what Osman spoke of in an interview with Graeme Greene for the magazine Positive.News in September 2024. “I feel optimistic about the human race,” he said. “We’re often told how awful and how doomed we are, but most people are decent human beings who want to find a way through.”
Osman’s philosophy aligns with that of historian Rutger Bregman, who said of his bestselling Humankind — A Hopeful History: “To be clear, this book is not a sermon on the fundamental goodness of people. Obviously, we’re not angels. We’re complex creatures, with a good side and a not-so-good side. The question is which side we turn to. My argument is simply this: that we — by nature, as children, on an uninhabited island, when war breaks out, when crisis hit — have a powerful preference for our good side.”
Like Bregman, Osman does not preach. He simply builds a multifaceted world of people who are either delightful or dangerous — and frequently both. Clues to the murder mystery are artfully placed for the discerning reader to spot, and he provides subtle pointers that help predict his characters’ moral leanings.
Just like real people, the club and their merry cast of cohorts are capable of growth. They learn and they change, which is part of what makes them so irresistible. Also, they are very, very funny.
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