In Richard Osman’s debut novel, four busybody pensioners investigate the murder of a man who was recently bludgeoned over the head with an old-fashioned spanner, and who had – prior to said bludgeoning – owned a stake in the luxury retirement village where they live. Coopers Chase, a shiny modern development surrounded by the sleepy countryside of south-east England, is a middle-class utopia that houses 300 residents over the age of 65 and boasts a swimming pool and “contemporary upscale restaurant”. Each week, “Waitrose delivery vans clink with wine and repeat prescriptions” as they pass over the cattle grid. It has been a lucrative investment for our bludgeoning victim: his stake, residents have learned, was worth £12.25m. Hearing this number, one character “gives a low whistle”. “Whatever money he had made before, Coopers Chase had been in another league entirely,” Osman writes. “A waterfall of money.” The sequels concern a box containing £100,000 of heroin, a £10m VAT scam and £20m worth of stolen diamonds: these, the novels tell us, are sums well worth killing for.
It is all chump change, though, when compared with the real value of The Thursday Murder Club series, which has sold over four-and-a-half million copies and earned Osman’s publisher, Viking, more than £35m. The first novel in the series, The Thursday Murder Club, was the bestselling title of 2020, and is the only book to have sold a million copies in the year of its release. The follow-up, The Man Who Died Twice (2021), is one of the fastest-selling novels since records began, and in 2022 the third instalment, The Bullet That Missed became the fastest-selling adult fiction hardback from a British author since records began – though the latest instalment, The Last Devil to Die, could surpass it. The film rights to the series have been bought by Steven Spielberg, with, Osman reassures us, a very famous cast to be announced – so The Thursday Murder Club’s multimillion-dollar film franchise, presumably starring anyone still receiving residual cheques from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, should be coming soon to a theatre near you.
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