The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman Book Summary
If you’re been reading along with The Thursday Murder Club Books, get ready for the fifth book that promises even more mystery, red herrings, and satisfying twists with your favorite main characters. This Impossible Fortune summary is to recap and help you remember the main points of the book before you read the full book review. If you haven’t read the entire book yet, I highly recommend it so you get the full mystery and humor.
You’ll want to finish all the previous installments before starting into this fifth installment if you haven’t already. Need a reminder of what happened in the last book? I have a review and summary of the previous bookThe Last Devil to Die. Check out my review and summary of the first book, The Thursday Murder Club, my review and summary of the second book The Man Who Died Twice, and my review and summary of The Bullet that Missed, the third book in the series.
Chapters 1-4
The Thursday Murder Club members have had a relatively quiet year since the last murder, and now they’ve has been busy helping with Joyce’s daughter’s, Joanna, wedding to Paul while also arguing with Joanna a lot. All four members of the Thursday Murder Club are at the wedding where the best man throws up while giving his speech. Joanna approaches Ibrihim to ask if she made a mistake by marrying Paul after six months, but Ibrihim assures her she didn’t.
Later, the best man, Nick Silver, approaches Elizabeth to ask for her help because someone is trying to kill him. Now out of prison because of a mistrial, Connie Johnson is mentoring a young thief, Tia, on Ibrihim’s advice to give back to those less fortunate.
Chapters 5-7
Nick tells Elizabeth (and shows pictures) that someone put a very professional bomb under his car because they’re after the code to what is cold storage business is protecting. Recently, him and his business partner, Holly Lewis, told two other people Lord Townes and Davey Noakes, about it, and now someone’s trying to kill him. Joyce reflects that the wedding went so well, and she really loves Paul for Joanna even though he’s just a university professor and not Joanna’s usual type.
Suzi forces her husband, Danny Lloyd, out of their house with one of his guns she’s found because he’s hit her again. Then, Suzi sends a picture of herself to her brother, Jason Ritchie, so he’ll be on his way. Danny agrees to leave but threatens to kill Suzi and Jason when he returns.
Chapters 8-14
Hungover on the bathroom floor, Ron has to suddenly get up when Jason and Suzi’s son, Kendrick, show up. Joyce and Elizabeth arrive at the location Nick gave Elizabeth, but it’s locked up tight with no visible way in. Connie is helping Tia with her plan to rob a luxury watch warehouse, where Tia just got a job as a cleaner.
Elizabeth calls Donna to report a possible break in she reportedly saw, and Donna gets the door to Nick Silver’s office. The office is in disarray with no signs of Nick, and Donna thinks they should get the police involved which Elizabeth declines. As they’re leaving, Elizabeth sees a partially hidden file with her name, and inside is a single note from Nick asking Elizabeth to find him.
Chapters 15-18
At his flat, Kendrick and Jason won’t tell Ron why they’re here, but only tells him Suzi has some things to arrange the next few days. Elizabeth and Joyce find Nick Silver’s house to retrieve the bomb under his car, but there’s no bomb anymore. After Joyce texts them, Joanna asks Paul to send Joyce the number for Nick’s partner, Holly, but Paul acts weird about it.
Elizabeth and Joyce visit Elizabeth’s old friend Jasper, a bomb expert, who confirms the bomb in the picture of Nicks car is real, would have killed him, and can be easily found online.
Chapters 19-21
The members of the Thursday Murder Club have Holly come to dinner at Coopers Chase where she asks for help finding Nick. She explains they run a company that stores companies secrets in physical files within vaults, so they can never be hacked. Every vault they have to open together, so Holly and Nick each get a separate code to each vault that opens only if you have both codes.
Holly and Nick recently told Lord Townes (a banker) and Davey Noakes (a cyber criminal) that they had over three hundred million dollars worth of Bitcoin to sell. Holly and Nick accepted the Bitcoin as a form of payment when they first started their business when it was worth a few thousand dollars. She also mentions that the only other person who has each code to the vault with the Bitcoin information is their solicitor who will pass on this (unknown to him) information if one of them dies.
After she leaves, her car explodes instantly killing her, but Elizabeth is able to pull her cellphone from the burning car. When the police come, it’s not Donna and Chris investigating, so the four don’t tell them anything or give the phone back. Paul and Joanna receive texts from Nick’s phone saying he’s okay, but Paul can tell it’s not really Nick sending the messages.
Chapters 22-27
Ron and Bogdan visit Davey to ask about Holly and Nick, and while Davey threatens to shoot them at first, he ends up liking the two. Davey tells them that he’s the original client that paid in Bitcoin, so he’s known about the money for years with no motive to steal it (as they can see from his house). Joanna and Paul come back from their honeymoon early to see Elizabeth about the text messages, and Joanna wonders what happens to the company now because Paul owns 5% as an early investor.
Danny is at a hotel plotting how to kill both Suzi and Jason. Davey has Bill Benson, a former miner and longtime employee of Holly and Nick, bring him down into their Compound with the safes. Elizabeth and Joyce bring the slightly charred phone to Jasper who gets a phone number that Holly called right before the bomb went off.
Chapters 28-32
Ron finds Bill Benson at a pub who is shocked to hear Holly is dead and Nick is missing. Elizabeth finds out the phone number Holly called belongs to a Jill Usher, a mom and teacher. Joyce and Elizabeth pretend to be genealogy experts with news about Jill’s family to interview her, but all they find is that Jill seems like a very normal school teacher with a suspicious husband, Jamie.
Bill leads Ron to a secluded lodge that he says is a headquarters into The Compound, but they can’t get to the vaults without Bill (or the other employee Frank) and a client scanning into the fingerprints and retinal scan. There’s also multiple doors, locks, scans, and other things guarding the vaults Bill tells Ron. Hey also tells Ron that Lord Townes is coming for his appointment on Wednesday.
Chapters 33-38
While seeing Connie, she reluctantly admits to Ibrihim that she’s a client of Nick and Holly. Joyce and Elizabeth visit Lord Townes who lies to them more than once, but says he’s innocent because he would have made a good amount of money brokering the deal for Holly and Nick legally, which is now most likely gone. Danny hires a hit man to kill Jason at his home, and Suzi on her way to pick up Kendrick from school.
Ron is distracted while meeting with the other members of the Thursday murder club because he’s wondering what’s going on with Suzi and Jason. Lord Townes decides for the first time in his life that he needs to do something drastic to take control of his life. He’s out of money and can’t afford his family home any longer.
Chapters 39-42
Paul admits to Joanna that he dated Holly for years in their twenties and again recently shortly before he met Joanna. But Paul tells Joanna he feels bad that he doesn’t feel more grief over Holly’s death. Working on a tip from Elizabeth, Donna finds out that Jill Usher’s husband, Jamie, has been convicted on all kinds of fraud when they lived around here.
Jeremy Jenkins, a solicitor, gets a file on his desk that contains an envelope he’s supposed to deliver to Nick Silver in the case of Holly Lewis’ death, which the hospital just called to confirm. But he can’t get a hold of Nick, so decides to try the other numbers in the file the next day.
Chapters 43-47
At the warehouse, Tia and her accomplice steal the truck full of luxury watches, but as they try to drive away the truck locks itself with an alarm going off. Tia shoots through the windshield, and, as she’s running away, Connie shows up to pick her up. Jamie Usher gets home to a squad car in his driveway, so he just keeps driving and decides to call Elizabeth, who left her card, because he thinks the police found out he’s still running a mortgage fraud.
While Kendrick’s at his house, Jason sees an Amazon delivery man on his Ring doorbell, but realizes something is off. Jason grabs Kendrick and runs out the back door as the man starts shooting through the front door. Jason and Ron get Kendrick to Ibrihim’s where Ron and Connie make a temporary truce in order to keep both Tia and Kendrick safe there.
Chapters 48-52
Donna visits Paul and Joanna to interview Paul, who inherits the company if Nick is dead, but Joanna insists that Paul was with her at all times during this time. Donna and Chris try to convince Ron and Jason to let them help with the shooting, but Ron and Jason won’t talk. Bogdan gets a message from Ron to come over while he’s fixing something Elizabeth, so they both go over to Ron’s place.
Ron and Jason say they need Bogdan to drive them somewhere, and Elizabeth begs them not to get caught for murder before leaving. Then, Connie shows up at Ron’s after Ibrihim told her about Suzi. Joanna answers a call from Jeremy Jenkins asking for Paul because he’s trying to reach Nick, but if Nick is also dead Paul gets both envelopes containing the codes.
Chapters 53-58
The next day with Bogdan there, Jamie Usher comes to Elizabeth’s flat, but after interrogating him, Elizabeth is sure he really doesn’t know Holly Lewis. Then, Elizabeth realizes that Holly wasn’t calling the Ushers but putting in her code to the safe following her own number for record, which just happens to be the Ushers phone number. Bill Benson takes Lord Townes down to his vault and sees him take a small wooden box out of it.
At Ibrihim’s flat, he starts talking to Tia and Kendrick (who loves codes) about the Holly Lewis case, and ends up showing them the fake text messages from Nick to Paul. But Tia and Kendrick call together all four of members of the Thursday murder club, and show them the texts were weird but actually from Nick. Hidden in the messages is a seven number code, now giving the group both halves of the code to their safe.
The Following Thursday
Chapters 59-63
Danny takes the first flight back to London because it’s an emergency. Connie agrees to get them down in The Compound because she’s an actual client, but only if Ron is the one to go with which he agrees to. Connie types in the code because Ron is having trouble keeping his fingers from shaking, and inside is the paper with the information for the Bitcoin.
Ibrihim receives a text from Ron saying they have the Bitcoin information, but Ron and Connie never show up. Hours later, Elizabeth, Ibrihim, Joyce, Kendrick, and Tia return to Coopers Chase still not hearing anything else from Ron or Connie.
Chapters 63-68
Joanna convinced Donna to get them the CCTV footage from outside the compound since Paul is the now owner without Nick being found. Joanna is watching footage from around the days Nick disappeared when she sees Holly bringing Davey Noakes to The Compound alone. So, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrihim, Joanna, and Paul go to Davey’s house to question him again.
Davey admits that Holly asked him to come to The Compound to tell him her plan to kill Nick with a car bomb, so she could have the money since they were never really friends. Thinking it was unfair, Davey’s men removed the car bomb from Nicks car, and later put it on her passenger seat while she was at dinner. They thought she would see it, but it accidentally went off when she put her purse on top of it.
Davey didn’t mean for the bomb to ever go off. He’s sure Nick is in hiding because Nick thinks Davey wants to kill him, especially if he heard Holly is dead.
Chapters 68-70
With a great deal of guilt, Davey also admits to the group that he tried to stop Holly killing Nick because when he originally gave them the Bitcoin as payment, it was fake. He made up numbers making it look real because he thought Bitcoin would just be a fad, and even since has been convincing Nick and Holly not to cash out. Ron waits in Pauline’s apartment because he knows he’s been followed here.
Danny walks in and admits that Connie has hired him to kill Ron after getting the paper for the Bitcoin. Ron agrees to giving him the paper if Danny calls off the hit on Jason, so Danny makes a call on speaker phone telling a man not to kill Suzi or Jason. Then, three armed police officers who were waiting in the bedroom come out and arrest Danny who was set up by Ron and Connie together to protect Ron’s family.
The Next Six Weeks and Four Days
Chapters 71-76
Lord Townes takes his friends boat out in the middle of the night with his father’s gun he took from the vault because he has no money left, too much debt, and nothing to live for now. Ron tells Ibrihim how much he means to Ron as his best friend after everything that happened, and that Connie agreed to help because she wanted Ibrihim to be proud of her.
Elizabeth takes Tia to meet a man who Elizabeth used to work with, and he agrees to train Tia unofficially in Belize for three months in job like Elizabeth used to have. Elizabeth and Davey are both looking for Nick, but Paul says he has a plan. In his motel room, Nick is listening to his favorite radio program he used to listen to with Paul in college when he hears Paul on the show dedicating a song to him and telling him to come home.
Read the Full Book Review
Now that you remember everything that happened in the book, read the full book review of this latest Thursday Murder Club mystery. I also have recommendations if you liked this latest addition to Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. Whether you’re looking for another cozy mystery, a new series, or just a fan of author Richard Osman, I have something for you.
