"The Impossible Fortune" by Richard Osman

An audio book, the 5th of a series that I'm familiar with. Elizabeth (ex spy), Joyce, Ibrahim (psychiatrist), and Ron (with the help of Bogdam) try to solve crimes.

Joyce, nearly 80, is pleased that her daughter Joanna has at last married. Her husband Paul's best man Nick owns a company along with Helen. It's worth £350 million, thanks to bitcoin. They'd been thinking of cashing in. Each had part of the code number for the account. Nick finds a bomb under his car and asks Elizabeth (now a widow) for help. Nick disappears. Texts arrive from his phone which don't seem authentic. Helen is blown up. They'd both recently visited Davey, a drugs criminal and investor in their company. Lord Townes is also involved with the company. Helen had phoned Jamie and Jill Usher. Elizabeth and Joyce go to Manchester to interview them.

Danny hits his wife Suzie. She threatens him with a gun. He leaves. They have a son Kendrick. Suzie's father is Ron. Bongan is sleeping with policewoman Donna. Her boss Chris is sleeping with her mother. Connie, now out of prison after a crime committed in a previous book, is training up Tia, a criminal. Ron and Bogdan visit Davey, who talks to them with a gun on the table. Elizabeth visits Lord Townes, who's strapped for money. He says something that they know to be a lie.

Paul (a professor) admits to Joanna that he'd known Holly for years and in his 40s, just before his whirlwind romance with Pippa, he'd been back with Holly for a year or so. Tia's crime goes wrong. Connie asks Ibrahim to take her in. Kendrick and his uncle Jason are shot at. They escape to Ron. Kendrick ends up at Ibrahim. Elizabeth realises that the Ushers' phone number was part of the code. Kendrick realises that Nick's texts were a sort of acrostic - the other part of the code. Ron and Connie go to the compound where the bitcoin info is in a vault. After getting the info, they disappear.

Pippa finds out that Holly and Davie were seen together at the compound. The Lord had visited too.

Davey says that the bitcoin info was bogus - the info in the vault was worthless. Holly was blown up by the bomb intended for Nick. Danny threatens Ron with a gun, demanding the bitcoin info from him, but Ron had set a trap and the police arrest Danny. Elizabeth gets Tia a job. The lord kills himself. Nick is still in hiding, not knowing what's happened, waiting for Elizabeth to find him.

I much prefer Joyce's sections - funny, sad, flashes of insight.

Other reviews

• Jen Med (by expanding the story to include asides about Ron’s family and Connie’s ill advised attempts at becoming a mentor to a young woman who has had her own brush or two with the law, as well as a really enhanced part for Joanna in this story, the action moves well beyond the TMC’s normal remit)
• damppebbles
• 1girl2manybooks (This is not my favourite instalment of this series)
• thewallflowerdigest (Everything felt half-baked, and the story lacked heart. There was no emotional core to it. The mystery was lacklustre and easily predicted.)

"The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman

An audio book.

Joyce, an ex-nurse, has been living in Cooper's Chase, an old people's community, for a year or so. She keeps a chatty diary/journal. It has dark moments. She doesn't like mentioning her late husband Gerry. She befriends Bernard, a widower who was married for 47 years to an Indian. Elizabeth asks her about knife wounds then invites her to join the Thursday club - a group of people (Ibrahim, a therapist; Ron, an ex-trade-unionist with celeb ex-boxer son Jason) who try to solve crimes. Each day John visits wife Penny (who used to be part of the club, but is now unconscious). Elizabeth keeps her husband Stephen's senility secret. They befriend community constable Donna, 26, who's moved from London for some reason.

Ian, (who built/owns the old people's residency) wants to replace his helper Tony with Bodgan. He's bought land (including a graveyard) to extend the residency. When Bogdan starts clearing the graveyard he finds bones and tells Elizabeth. Tony is bludgeoned to death. By his body is a photo of a table piled with money. Jason's in the photo. Chris, a detective, investigates the murder. The club get Donna onto his team. The club repeatedly out-manouevre Chess, Joyce adding chaos that Elizabeth (ex MI5?) exploits. Then Ian dies, injected with poison. Jason becomes a suspect for Tony's death. The priest who tried to protect the graveyard is the main suspect for Ian's death - he's actually a retired doctor.

Bernard kills himself - he's had enough. John mercy-kills Penny then kills himself. Bogdan and Stephen enjoy playing chess together. The people in the photograph and the photographer are found. The priest/doctor had got a nun pregnant. She was buried in the graveyard which is why he was campaigning to preserve the graveyard. Penny, an ex-police woman, had told John that she's killed a man who had abused his wife. John in turn had to kill to keep it secret. Bernard had lied to his offspring about having his wife's ashes spread at Benares. Joyce ensures that Bernard's ashes mingle with his wife's locally, at sea.

I like the humour and the incidental subject matter - there's discussion of Waitrose vs Lidl; the frequency of children's visits; TV series and how to record them; the all-powerful car-parking committee. There's lots of sadness.

Other reviews

• reviewsfeed (The protagonists of this story are very different from each other and endearing in their antics)
• novelnotions (almost everything about this book failed to capture my interest. For characters that are supposed to be quirky and unique, other than Elizabeth, none of the characters were fascinating at all. ... For a murder mystery novel, The Thursday Murder Club has nihil tension. It felt like reading a slice-of-life novel with a murder mystery masquerading as a plot. The mystery was not gripping. The villain is incredibly forgettable. The characterizations weren’t in-depth enough. And nothing about this short book felt compelling enough to me. I saw reviews that said this book was hilarious. I did not even smile once reading through it)
• debbish ( it’s addictive. It’s cleverly-written, extremely funny and offers up some delightful characters. )
• Sarah Collins (Joyce may be lovely and charming, but she’s also got a razor-sharp tongue, is incredibly observant and can give a mean critique. ... The Thursday Murder Club may be a cosy murder mystery but it’s also a story about aging and friendship. It’s funny and witty and at the same time written with compassion. ... Richard Osman provides a glimpse into the future and the challenges that come with growing old – isolation, grief, illness, losing your faculties – but he does it in a way that is light-hearted. )

"The Bullet That Missed" by Richard Osman

An audio book.

Connie Johnson (in her 30s) is in prison, awaiting trial. She is still running a drug ring. She's inside because of Bogden and Ron Richie. She plans to take revenge.

Ron Richie, Ibrahim (a psychologist), Joyce (78) and Elizabeth are old people who meet on Thursdays to solve cases that have stumped the police. They're interested in the Bethany Waites case. They think that talking to Mike Waghorn, a TV newsreader, might help. Pauline, his make-up artist, a widow for 6 months, joins in. Bethany was a TV reporter who uncovered VAT fraud. Her car went off a cliff. Her body was never found. She'd told her colleague Mike that she had discovered something important. Mike doesn't tell people that he suspects that Fiona (an ambitious colleague of Bethany then, now famous on TV) might have had something to do with it. Heather Garbut was imprisoned for the VAT fraud. Jack Mason, her boss, got away with it.

Elizabeth (ex MI6) and slightly demented husband Steve are kidnapped by "the Viking", an expert on money-laundering. Elizabeth is told to kill Victor (his money laundering rival) else Joyce will die. Victor, ex KGB now living in London, was nicknamed the Bullet. He and Elizabeth had been almost lovers. Elizabeth fakes his death, firing into the ceiling instead of into Victor. He stays in hiding with Joyce.

Bogdan and Donna (a policewomen) have sex on their first night. Bogdan does jobs for Elizabeth and plays chess with Steve. Donna's colleague is Chris. The Kent boss of police is Andrew (who writes novels).

Ron starts dating Pauline. Ibrahim visits Connie in jail and gets her to interview Heather. Soon after, Heather's dead. Ibrahim becomes Connie's therapist. Elizabeth and Joyce entertainingly interview Fiona. Ron chats with Jack. The Viking, by looking at the bullet-hole that in Victor's penthouse, realises that Elizabeth has tried to fool him. He tries to kill Victor, but is drugged by Joyce. He agrees to help Elizabeth. Mike has always been grateful to Bethany for helping him come to terms with being gay. Jack is found dead.

Ibrahim et al realise that the laundered money had gone to people with the names of characters in Andrew's story. 2 days later, Andrew is set up to meet The Viking. He'd been told that the Viking could recover the laundered money (£10 million). The meeting is broadcast live on Fiona's feed. Victor appears, and then Mike. Andrew confesses.

We then get Bethany's PoV from Dubai. She faked her death (with the unknowing help of Pauline) when she received a bullet in the post. She used some of the illicit money.

I like the style. Osman handles old people's loves, dementia, etc, with understanding, and can do man-talk. He can switch the tone convincingly. Plot credibility and entertainment are well balanced. He uses fewer intellectual/literary allusions than Kate Atkinson does.

Other reviews

• Alison Flood

"The man who died twice" by Richard Osman

Elizabeth is invited to a meeting by someone who's been dead for years (actually he's a fake character invited when she was in MI5). When she arrives she finds that it's Douglas, her ex-husband. While looking around Martin Lomax's house for evidence he'd stolen £20 million of jewels. Lomax suspects him (the jewels belong to US Mafia), so he's in hiding, being protected by young Poppy.

Elizabeth's friends (Ron, Joyce and Ibrahim - all 70+) don't know all about her past, but they've solved cases together. Ibrahim, has just been mugged by someone called Ryan. Elizabeth says that she'll help protect Douglas if they give her info about Ryan.

One of Lomax's men break in and would have killed Douglas but Poppy killed the man first. Douglas wonders who revealed his location. Maybe MI5 want to get rid of him?

2 bodies are found in the safe house, the male one identified by DNA and the female one identified by her mother, Siobhan. Sue from MI5 interviews Elizabeth. Elizabeth works out that the diamonds are in a left luggage locker. She decides to use them as bait to catch the murderers. Siobhan was seen on CCTV trying to find the locker. Maybe Douglas rigged his own death? Maybe Poppy rigged hers? Maybe they're both alive?

Elizabeth is married to Steve who sometimes plays chess with a builder, Bob Dan. Elizabeth asks the builder to buy her £20k of coke. He gets it from Connie, a well known supplier. They plant it in Ryan's house and call the police. They assume it's a set-up. Ryan run away before the court case. The poilce are Donna and Chris. They've been staking out Connie's place without success. Chris is going out with Patrice, Donna's mother.

A meeting is arranged in a room at the end of the pier. Connie, driven by Ryan, thinks she's going there to establish a drug deal. A US Mafia person has flown in thinking he's getting his diamonds back. Martin is there too. Martin and the Mafia guy are shot. Connie and Ryan are arrested outside. It dawns on Elizabeth that maybe Sue is the mastermind. By then however, Sue has Elizabeth and Joyce at gunpoint. Elizabeth tells Sue her theory, Sue correcting the details. Sue had kept Elizabeth interested in the plot because only Elizabeth could lead her to the jewels. Sue and Douglas were lovers and had planned the crime, but when Sue discovered that Douglas still loved Elizabeth, she decided to kill Douglas too. Siobhan wasn't Poppy's mother. She was one of Martin's exs. When the 3 women get to Joyce's, where the diamonds and Sue's accomplices are, they discover Bob Dan with a gun. The friends decide to donate the £20 million to a dementia charity - a man they knew had died of it and had thus "died twice".

Joyce's journal entries provide an alternative viewpoint. Running jokes include Joyce's interest in men, the trouble old people have with new tech, the reputation of various newspapers, etc. And there's lots of fun on the way - friends are impressed that a woman's going out with diving instructor. When he turns out to be a driving instructor they ask if he looks in the mirror before pulling out, but that's as rude as it gets. I enjoyed it.