The
Impossible Fortune, by Richard Osman.
Hands up anyone who thinks the gang from the Thursday
Murder Club has done its dash, grown a bit hackneyed and predictable – in
short, can’t cut it any more: Harrumph. NO HANDS AT ALL!! I should think so.
It’s such a pleasure to meet these singular characters
all again; they are so dear to us that
we would be happy to follow the most boring of their routines at Coopers Chase
Retirement Village just to be part of their unique way of looking at the world,
and at themselves – which as we know, can come up wanting.
Joyce, former nurse, who sometimes employs a wildly different
kind of logic to her friend Elizabeth (ex spy) to arrive at the same sharp
conclusions is in raptures because her only daughter Joanna is marrying Paul, a
Sociology Professor and at the reception Joyce is in 7th Heaven
because she can introduce him as ‘my Son-in-Law, Paul’ – which she does to
tiresome effect. Elizabeth (ex spy) is
grieving terribly for her beloved husband who has recdently died, and is taking
a break from the reception and its festivities, only to be approached by the
Best Man, who asks for her help in finding out who has put a bomb under his car
parked in the driveway of his home. Grief
in its many forms is forced to take a back seat as Elizabeth and Joyce embark
on their latest mystery, ably assisted by the rest of the members of the
Thursday Murder Club, including ex-eminent Psychologist Ibrahim and retired
Firebrand Unionist Ron, who is having troubles of his own: his daughter’s drop-kick violent husband has
finally been given his marching orders by Ron’s daughter, but he doesn’t like
being told what to do, so he hires a hit man to dispose of them all. Big mistake!
Ron’s son foils the plot and ex-hubbie is forced to plan
another hit by himself – which he is greedy enough to do because he has gotten
wind of the fact that Ron has access to an enormous fortune in Bitcoin, left to
gather value until it has reached a total that sounds like a multitude of phone
numbers. Shouldn’t be too hard to
access; that old Ron is way past his
use-by date: piece of cake! Or not.
Once again we are turning pages at breakneck speed and
loving every minute; new characters are
introduced and minor characters have been given a dusting-off so thorough that
I hope they will appear in the next book – yes, Richard Osman has done it
again: made us forget, however
briefly, what a worrying place our world
is at this time. FIVE STARS
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