{"id":2597,"date":"2025-09-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2597"},"modified":"2025-10-18T18:57:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T07:57:29","slug":"book-review-the-impossible-fortune-richard-osman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2597","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Impossible Fortune \u2014 Richard Osman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\n

The first Thursday Murder Club <\/em>novel released since the premiere of the star-studded, anodyne treacle of Chris Columbus\u2019 movie is perfect middle of the road Osman. It\u2019s going to sell millions and that\u2019s all that matters, as the series has ossified into singsong koans about senior citizens who talk like children but hold secret depths. It\u2019s not quite that extreme, but sometimes it feels like it. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The best man at a wedding tells Elizabeth that someone is out to kill him. Emerging from the rut of her grief, Elizabeth\u2019s interest is piqued, and piques further when, the day afterwards, the best man disappears. The Thursday Murder Club bands together to figure out, with the help of their increasingly wide network of criminal accomplices, precisely what the best man knew, while also taking turns babysitting Ron\u2019s grandson, Kendrick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all perfectly serviceable, not infrequently affecting, and often funny. But The Impossible Fortune <\/em>isn\u2019t particularly well structured: Joanna becomes a major character, which is fine, while the police are largely sidelined. Osman has become almost more enamoured with his various crims \u2014 even the freshly introduced ones \u2014 than with his established oldies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The character work doesn\u2019t make up for the story, which Osman doesn\u2019t weave together or really get off the ground. There\u2019s dynamism to the Ron B plot (which is really the A plot) but, rather like the smug utility of AI in 2024\u2019s We Solve Murders<\/em>, the titular impossible fortune is a lame duck that is too trendy for its own good. By the end it\u2019s not even clear if it\u2019s really strong enough to be considered a MacGuffin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the character work isn\u2019t always Everyone seems particularly bumbly, and not in a way that seems to be a cunning ruse. It often beggars belief; towards the end Joyce is unable to locate the pause button on her remote control, which Joanna informs her is the \u201cbutton with two parallel lines on it.\u201d Joyce is an eighty year old woman in 2025 with no evidence of cognitive decline (we\u2019ve already done four books of that), the pause button was invented in Sweden in the 1960s, and there is no way, in between tapes, cassettes, videos, CDs, DVDs, and all of human history, that Joyce has not encountered it for a full three quarters of her life. If you\u2019re going to pick a \u201cold people don\u2019t understand remotes\u201d joke, don\u2019t use a universal symbol, Osman. You are smarter than this and so are your readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also parts in here about the characters growing more frail as they age, but it still feels that Osman isn\u2019t yet strong enough to face the concept. The groundwork is laid, but only barely. It feels like Osman is trying hard not to advance his characters too far (he is going to live longer than they can, realistically), so this is far more timid than his usual work \u2014 and one of the solutions is risible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Impossible Fortune <\/em>is going to make a lot of people happy, and that\u2019s fine. But we know that Richard Osman can do more than fine, even if the tone is more often than not \u201caw shucks\u201d amused and the characters\u2019 moral codes are divorced from the petty morality of the real world. This one doesn\u2019t amount to much and, due to his publishing schedule, it will be 2027 before you see these old folks again. If it tides people over, that\u2019s good, but readers deserve more than a faint smile. There\u2019s no blood in this water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And let\u2019s face it: the movie was wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Thursday Murder Club novel released since the premiere of the star-studded, anodyne treacle of Chris Columbus\u2019 movie is perfect middle of the road Osman. It\u2019s going to sell millions and that\u2019s all that matters, as the series has ossified into singsong koans about senior citizens who talk like children but hold secret depths. It\u2019s not quite that extreme, but sometimes it feels like it.  The best man at a wedding tells Elizabeth that someone is out to kill him. Emerging from the rut of her grief, Elizabeth\u2019s interest is piqued, and piques further when, the day afterwards, the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","has_thumb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Impossible-Fortune-Featured-Image.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-FT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2597"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2603,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions\/2603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}