In The Impossible Fortune , the fifth and the most emotionally resonant instalment in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series so far, murder is once again the backdrop rather than the pulse of the narrative.

There is a bitcoin fortune — vast, shady, possibly untraceable — and a trail of secrets winding through a wedding reception, a disappearance, a “cold storage” and murder. There are crooks and druglords at various stages of reformation or lack thereof – unrepentant, wannabe, quasi-retired.

But the real mystery, as ever, lies elsewhere: in the private griefs of Osman’s four ageing protagonists at the upmarket retirement home Coopers Chase; in the daily courage it takes to face the world through one’s lowest, and in the absurd, beautiful business of staying close to people even as

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