The Impossible Fortune – The Thursday Murder Club 5, by Richard Osman, 2025
The Impossible Fortune was the best selling novel in the UK in 2025. It is therefore proof from any criticism I can level at it. More to the point if you have read the previous four novels in the series you will have long ago decided if this is your cup of tea – if it is then again any criticism will be moot and if it isn’t then you will almost certainly be skipping this review. Nonetheless, I shall press on, because surely the novel deserves more than the unthinking adulation it seems to have received thus far? Equally the ‘read it, review it’ rule will continue to apply in 2026!
Osman has reached the point in the series where recaps of the cast and setting are not required – it is assumed that the reader will be familiar with the context. Also, very few readers will start the series on book 5 and were they to do so (it could happen – I started the Harry Potter series on book 4, Goblet of Fire) there are enough summaries available elsewhere to help them find their feet. We are back at Coopers Chase, the retirement home for active and prosperous pensioners, with Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron, the founder members of the Thursday Murder Club, and a large and growing cast of secondary characters. A new investigation presents itself on cue, although it is not clear whether it actually is a case of murder or not. The gang don’t worry about this of course – the mystery is what matters. Some valuable crypto-currency is missing – or rather the codes to access it are – and the challenge is to find them before some of the other potential claimants do so.
Still grieving former spy Elizabeth is not at the top of her game and doesn’t provide the insights that usually comes to her so easily. Former trade unionist Ron is worried about his family but finds a way of combining his role in the investigation into the missing crypto with a means of protecting them all, including his precocious grandson, Kendrick. Joyce is a continuing delight and the main source of humour in the novel, especially her relationship with her daughter Joanna, who as the novel opens has just married new character lecturer Paul. Paul has two friends Holly Lewis and Nick Silver (Osman not over-exerting his name giving skills here) who together run a high security ‘cold storage’ business. This is presented as something innovative and shadowy, slightly mysterious, but to me it seemed remarkably similar to the safe deposit box services offered by many banks. Several years ago Holly and Nick were paid for their services in Bitcoin; this has increased in value exponentially over the years and they have now decided to cash it out. But as soon as they have decided to do this Nick finds a bomb attached to his car and very shortly thereafter Holly’s car is blown up, with her in it. Nick cannot be traced and mysterious text messages exchanges with Paul suggest he might have been killed.
This is a problem because to access the crypto-currency a 12 character code is required, half of which is held by Holly and half by Nick. So multiple puzzles present themselves – who tried to kill Nick, who actually killed Holly, where is Nick and how can the crypto-currency be saved?
In the event either of them dies, Holly and Nick have left their access codes with a solicitor, so the final problem in this list is fairly straightforward. Nevertheless the murder club devote most of their efforts to finding the codes which Holly and Nick have also hidden in plain sight. This is where the mystery element of the novel begins to break down somewhat – it is not clear why they have done this. Please note spoilers follow at this point. Just before she is killed by the car bomb, Holly dials a phone number, which eventually turns out to be a disguised form of her code. (Hiding personal number codes, PIN’s etc, in a fake phone number is quite common – so if I wanted to write down my PIN number 1234 in case I forgot it I would create a fake contact Bill’s Pizza and write it down as 07770 001234.) But there is no plausible reason why Holly would dial this number just before she dies; worse still there’s no reason why she would write it down at all as she has memorised it for so long, and no reason why she would dial the number rather than save it as a contact. In other words this is a very poorly constructed attempt to mislead the reader looking to ‘solve’ the mystery. Nick’s code is disclosed in an even clumsier manner, hiding it in text messages to Paul (so for example “I have written a hidden number in this sentences” disguises the number ten) that depend entirely on Paul sending the right replies in the thread. It also depends on Paul showing the messages to Elizabeth and her being able to decipher the code. Again it is totally unclear why he does this, other of course than to provide a simple puzzle for the reader looking to ‘solve’ the novel.
All of which it to miss the point – the mystery element of this series has always been secondary to Osman’s celebration of the liberation of old age. Unencumbered by jobs or responsibility, the Thursday Murder Club members are able to enjoy the later stages of their life by doing pretty much whatever they want. Rules are for other people. Osman also recognises they are so much more than just old people – they all have a lifetime of skills and experience to draw upon. This is a combination that is highly effective when deployed in the solving of murder. Recognising the value and worth of older people rather than seeing them as in god’s waiting room, decrepit or infirm (there’s even a reference to Coopers Chase residents getting frisky in the community hot tub) is at the heart of this series, and it is to be celebrated for that fact.
The Impossible Fortune has a number of sub-plots that are arguably more interesting than the central mystery. Ron’s daughter finally escapes an abusive relationship and in doing so exposes her whole family to a dangerous revenge plot. Connie, the drug dealer imprisoned earlier in the series has been released from prison but continues her unlikely relationship with former therapist Ibrahim, which in this novel finally solidifies into a friendship and even, potentially, a partnership. Joyce enjoys finally being a mother-in-law and her relationship with her daughter is drawn with skill and sensitivity. The novel has lots of good jokes – Joyce coming to terms with technology is a sub-section in its own right:
Joanna has recently introduced Joyce to Rightmove. It’s a website where you can see houses for sale. You click on them and they let you look inside! Thousands of strangers’ houses! Twenty, thirty, sometimes forty pictures. You can see their sofas, their kitchen cabinets, where they’ve put their wooden LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE signs, what they’ve done with their gardens and so on. And this site is free! Joyce doesn’t believe in all progress, self-service checkouts, for example, but she is certainly happy that somebody invented Rightmove.”
A visit from Prince Edward is mined for all it is worth; references to David Tennant and Pierce Brosnan jokingly call back to the 2025 film adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club (and its controversial casting decisions).
Osman knows his audience. The Impossible Fortune is printed double spaced with very large font – the largest I can ever recall seeing. Chapters are a few pages long at most. Nothing is too demanding or difficult. At times it seems he is falling into the trap the books warn against – under-estimating the old. The cosiness factor is kept in check, and the moments of genuine peril, particularly when Jason (Ron’s son) and Kendrick are being shot at are uncomfortably worrying. But we are quickly back to jigsaw puzzles, bourbons and sherry before you know it. The author continues to stubbornly refuse to kill off any of his main characters in defiance of my prediction that he would do so in book 2, but I refuse to back down and have faith that one day this prediction will come true. Osman is the king of cosy crime and you can’t help but feel happy for him. Let’s just hope that if they film the later books that they get the casting right this time round!
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