Aging isn’t easy, and topics like dementia and medically assisted dying can be hard to talk about. The British mystery writer Richard Osman is trying to change that. Osman has reimagined the notion of aging through his best-selling “Thursday Murder Club” series, centered on four seniors living in a posh retirement community who solve murders.
In this episode, he sits down with the Opinion writer Michelle Cottle to discuss why seniors make ideal fictional detectives and how a “cozy” murder mystery is the perfect frame to explore growing old.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle, and I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. I also have a bit of an obsession with the graying of America and the major changes that are coming with an aging population, on lots of levels.
This obsession has led me to dig into everything from caregiving and housing policy to the culture of the Villages, the mega-retirement community in Florida, to the rise of the reality TV show “The Golden Bachelor,” which has a new season. This week I’m talking with Richard Osman, who writes the best-selling mystery novels known as the “Thursday Murder Club” series. These books revolve around four residents of a posh retirement village in the British countryside who investigate murders in their spare time.
The fifth book, “The Impossible Fortune,” is out in the U.S. on Sept. 30, and it comes on the heels of a Netflix adaptation of the original book. But before I get too carried away, I really should introduce their creator. Richard Osman, welcome, thank you so much for doing this.
Richard Osman: It’s an absolute pleasure, Michelle. Lovely to meet you across the ocean.
Cottle: Yes, you’re meeting me in the evening because of the time difference. So we will just dive right in here. I have a confession to make right off the bat, which is that I’m an enormous fan girl of your work.
Osman: Thank you.
Cottle: Bordering a little on minor stalkerish.
Osman: That’s OK. As I say, we have an ocean between us, so —
Cottle: It’s safer that way.
Osman: Perfect.
Cottle: But I am not really a mystery novel fan. I was bullied into reading the original “Thursday Murder Club” by my oldest girlfriend, who swore to me that your books were something different, and she was not wrong. But I don’t want to try to boil them down. I want to make you do it instead. What do you think sets these books apart and makes them resonate with readers?
Osman: The reductive version would be: People in their 80s, unlikely friends who meet at a retirement village — probably wouldn’t have met at any previous point in their life — have gathered together a lifetime of skills and are living in the bucolic English countryside. A body turns up on their doorstep, and the four of them team up to solve the murder. The reductive version is a lovely, cozy crime mystery. And hopefully that was why your friend recommended it and hopefully why you liked it.
It’s really about characters who are slightly older. And it’s about unlikely friendships and the world we live in, what we do to older people and the invisibility they have and the way we underestimate them. You get all the lovely packaging of a cozy crime. You get all the cuteness of an English murder mystery. But really, I hope what you are reading is something about real people living real lives with plenty of laughs, plenty of tears and plenty of murders.
Cottle: One of the big things that sets these stories apart for me is the perspective of the main characters, who are all older, and it really informs their views on life and death and risk and justice. Did you know you were going to wind up delving into these existential issues when you started all this?
Osman: I really did, actually. It’s taken a long time for me to write a novel. I’ve written all sorts of things over the years, and I kept waiting for something that I knew had a little bit of depth to it, something that I could really get my teeth into. My mom lives in a retirement village, and I go there and meet all these people who’ve lived these extraordinary lives but slightly shut away from the heart of our culture. The second I had this idea, I was aware I had a gang of people who are very different from each other but a gang of people who’ve done extraordinary things.
As a huge fan of crime fiction, I knew the murders and the plots can take care of themselves, but I had a bottomless well of character, experience and stories that I could draw upon with these characters. So right from the start, I thought it was worth me having a go at this because it feels like if I get the first one right, then others will follow. I knew there was plenty for me to write about here.
Cottle: Your characters are talking about hard stuff like loss, grief, loneliness, assisted dying, dementia. I feel like you and I have come at some of the same topics from really different directions now.
As a reporter, I tend to find that readers either really identify with what I’m writing about or that they just don’t want to think about it at all — like, “I don’t want to think about my parents getting old. I don’t want to think about getting old.” But on the other hand, we are tackling these things in a way that gives people a really appealing entry point. You know, murder, friendship, cake, baking. It’s like you’re sneaking tough issues in there for us to chew over.
Osman: Yeah, sneaking the vegetables under the ketchup.
Cottle: Do you hear from readers that they’re thinking about these things?
Osman: Yeah, definitely. One of the lovely things about writing the books is you have so many conversations with people, and a subject like assisted dying, as you say, it’s fascinating. It’s probably one of the most fascinating philosophical questions we can ask ourselves as human beings.
But, yes, we don’t always want to read beyond the headline. There’s always something else we could read that’s more palatable or easier. But with this, we are reading a murder mystery, and we’re laughing at jokes, and we’re laughing at characters with each other and then suddenly think, “Oh, now I’m reading about assisted dying,” and because I’ve got a gang of people, I can write about it.
Funnily enough, I wrote two chapters in a row — one from the perspective of a character who believes in it very strongly and one from the perspective of a character who doesn’t believe in it. These two people love each other, but they happen to disagree on this.
You’re getting to discuss something that people might normally avoid, something they might change the channel on or click past to the next article. That means a lot of people come up to me in the street to talk about it. We talk about dementia, grief, all of these things, and I absolutely love those conversations.
Cottle: You had a family member who suffered through Alzheimer’s, right?
Osman: Yeah.
Cottle: Did that inform how you approach one of the main characters’ husbands? In the book, he’s suffering from dementia. Did your experience inform how you were writing some of this?
Osman: Yeah, if you talk to anybody who works with dementia patients in any way, they’ll tell you every single experience is unique. Everything is different, and the dementia often takes on the form of the person with dementia. It’s a very personal illness.
My grandfather had dementia. He was a very bright, very strong man. He had been a cop and served in the army, so he was used to being, you know, very traditionally male. And then suddenly the faculties began to go. In his final years, I would visit him often, speaking to him and noticing what he remembered and what he didn’t. The last things to remain were probably laughter and love. Those were the final parts of him that stayed, and I wanted to pay tribute to that.
I wanted to understand him — how he was thinking, what his brain was doing, which circuits were still complete and which weren’t. So really, I’m writing about him. The fact that it resonates with so many other people is wonderful. Every example of dementia is slightly different, but there’s enough we all share.
In my conversations with him, I was constantly inside his head, thinking: What is his brain doing now? Where is it reaching? What is it trying to reach, and what does it actually reach? That became the foundation for Stephen, the character in my books who suffers from dementia. I wanted to give Stephen absolute, 100 percent humanity. I wanted his thought process to feel rational within his own mind. That was what I was trying to capture — how his brain might be working. And from what people tell me, it resonates, which is all I could hope for.
Cottle: It was the same for me. I went through this with my father, who passed away earlier this year. Like your grandfather, he was always in charge — completely self-sufficient, never wanting help from anyone. We had these strange moments with him, though. Sometimes he would think he was being drafted while sitting in the doctor’s office or that he was interviewing for a job in the presidential administration. He was always hard charging, always driven.
When I read Stephen, the way he’s portrayed is handled so delicately and beautifully, I thought it had to come, at least in part, from a personal place.
Osman: You know, my granddad came from the back streets of Brighton — no money, nothing. In the end, he was in a residential home not far from where he’d grown up, which is often the case.
Whenever I visited, in this big place with 20 bedrooms and lots of residents, he would always take me aside and ask, “Is this my house?” And I’d say, “Yeah, it is your house.” Then he’d reply, “I’ve done well for myself, haven’t I?” And I’d say, “Yeah, you have. You’ve done well for yourself, mate.” That’s what it’s about — finding the moments of dignity and humanity in it.
Cottle: You said before that you were struck that these older residents had all these amazing life experiences but were kind of now largely ignored or underestimated, which sounds sad. We hear a lot about the invisibility that comes with aging. But in some ways, you turn this on its head. Your characters can do all these crazy things and get in all sorts of trouble and basically get away with it, specifically because they’re older and people are underestimating them. I feel like you’re making a pitch for aging or —
Osman: I really am, because, as I say, things occur to me as I go along, but one of the things that occurred to me very early on is the lack of consequence for a lot of what they’re doing. A lot of us are scared throughout life because we think, “Oh, no, but what happens if I lose my job or the money starts going down or something?”
When you’re older, the worst is going to happen at some time. You’ve got that perspective. And there’s a part in the first book, I think, where one person says: The only people who can tell us what to do now are our doctors and our children, and we rarely see our children, so no one’s really telling us what to do.
In the very first book, Elizabeth says to the cops at one point: “I’ll tell you what you should do — why don’t you arrest me? Lock an 80-year-old woman in a cell. See how much fun that is for you. See how much paperwork you’ll have to do. I’ll even pretend I think you’re my grandson. Go on, do it.” And you realize there’s a real freedom in that — a kind of carte blanche to behave badly, mischievously, to open doors you shouldn’t be allowed to open. I absolutely dove into all of that and took full advantage of their ability to beguile everyone.
Cottle: See, I’m very much looking forward to being there with them. I saw an article asking rather grandly if your books might change the way that Britain thinks about growing old. And I think the piece was specifically referring to the idea that seniors could decide to move into these communities where they hang out with people their age and get involved in stuff.
But even beyond that, your characters are thumbing their noses at the idea that seniors should fade into the background. I have to think this goes over really well with your readers of a certain age.
Osman: Yeah, I think it’s fascinating, because younger readers always say: Oh, my God, thank you for making these older characters heroes. That feels so aspirational. I can’t wait until I retire.
But older readers say something completely different: Thank you for not making us the heroes. Thank you for making us flawed and mischievous. Thank you for showing us drinking at 11:30, gossiping, falling in love and out of love. Thank you for writing us as human beings.
My starting point for all of this is simple. Everyone listening will have an answer to this question: How old do you feel in your head? There’s always a number, a point where you stop aging inside yourself.
My mom is 83, and she says she feels 30. And isn’t that right? Nobody really has an old brain. People may have old bodies and deal with old-age issues, but their minds are still young — 27, 30, 35, 40. So when I write these characters, I don’t think for a single second about the fact that they’re 80. I think about the age they still are in their heads, even though they live in very different surroundings.
Cottle: Chronologically speaking, you are my age, which we’ll simply refer to as 50-something. We are not yet senior.
Osman: Or we could say 40-something, but that “something” would be 14, so —
Cottle: Yeah, that works. I do think we’re not yet seniors, but I do think for people at our life stage, these books really are aspirational. Not that I’m looking to spend my golden years chasing after murderers, maybe.
Osman: Oh, God, I am.
Cottle: Your characters present old age not as a time when life becomes narrower and narrower, as it can sometimes feel when you’re aging, but as a time of reinvention, of expanding comfort zones. That’s a very comforting thought for certain middle-aged readers eyeing the road ahead. And it sounds like I’m not the only one. That idea is clearly resonating with your younger readers, too.
Osman: The age demographics reading this book are insane, because they’re about older people, yes, but they’re not read predominantly by older readers. People from all age groups are picking them up. I think part of that is wish fulfillment, because loneliness is a real issue. There’s an epidemic of loneliness among older people but also, interestingly, among people in their late teens and early 20s, though for different reasons.
The quick fix, in both cases, is community. Of course, not everyone wants that, and that’s fine. Where my mom lives, if you don’t want to see anyone, you just shut your front door. But if you do want company, you open it, and that feels like something to aspire to. The fact that these books put that idea into the world — that later years can be lived in community — feels positive. We don’t have to fade into the background as we get older. We don’t have to disappear. We can grow, become more visible, even noisier. We can become more trouble, in the best way, as we age.
Cottle: That’s my goal.
Osman: That’s my goal as well. That’s sort of everyone’s goal, isn’t it? To just continue causing trouble.
Cottle: Well, when I travel around covering stories on senior housing or senior transportation, I’m always on the lookout for where it seems like the most fun. Is it the retirement communities in Florida? The group housing in Portland? I’m constantly taking notes. I’ve even told the office that someday I intend to be their senior community bureau, because I love the idea of living in community. I know a lot of people want to age in place in the homes they’ve lived in forever, but I’m more of a joiner. I want to go.
Osman: At every stage of life, we’re told what it’s supposed to be about. As kids, it’s education — getting to high school, then the right college. In our 20s, it’s climbing the ladder, getting promoted, earning more money. Then it becomes about raising a family, building a community, watching the next generation grow. But eventually, you reach an age where they’ve run out of instructions. There’s no one telling you, “Now the point of life is X.” And you realize: Oh, I can just do what I want. I could have done that all along. What was I thinking?
That’s the moment you finally understand: I’m allowed to have fun. I’m allowed to be with people, to laugh, to enjoy myself. Yes, I still want to look after others and make sure my community is safe and cared for, but I’m also allowed to have fun.
And that feels like a revolutionary act.
Cottle: These books have been licensed in something like 40 languages or 40 countries at this point.
Osman: It’s a lot of languages, yes.
Cottle: Is there anything peculiarly British about the approach to aging in your stories that you think might not translate all that well?
Osman: Well, I thought so. I assumed that in America you were like us — very culturally dominated by Instagram influencers in their 20s. But in Mediterranean countries, in Arabic countries, in China, elders are traditionally revered. Except every time I go to one of those places, people say, “Oh no, we’re exactly the same. We treat older people terribly.” And I’ll say, “No, you don’t, not really.” And they insist, “Yes, honestly, that’s why we love these books.”
I was amazed at how universal that feeling is. I knew it was the case in my country, in much of Western Europe and in the States. But then I’d go to India, and people would say, “Finally, someone said it.” I find that fascinating.
Cottle: What do you think the role of social media has been in this regard? Does it help because there are these other avenues for connection, or are older folks getting left out of all this? Do you have a sense of its impact?
Osman: I think if you’re over 80, you’re probably the generation that just about escaped social media. For them, it’s a way to keep up. My mom can follow her granddaughter on Instagram, for example. That kind of connection just wasn’t possible before.
But at the same time, it doesn’t drive them completely insane the way it does for people in their 40s and 50s. We grew up without it, and yet we’ve had to live our adult lives fully immersed in it. It’s thrown us completely off course. Our whole compass feels distorted. People in their 20s have different issues with social media, but at least they grew up with it. They’re natives.
Cottle: My kids know how to navigate it. I do not.
Osman: Yeah, exactly. Psychologically to them, social media isn’t “Oh, my God, what’s this now?” It’s simply what they grew up with, just as we grew up with television, while the generation before us reacted with, “Oh, my God, what’s this?”
I think social media will eventually spark an opposite reaction, the same way A.I. will. And this ties back to your point about community. A.I. will do a million different things, but one thing it will definitely do is push us back into the arms of real human beings. It will place a huge premium on sitting across from someone, talking about real things in a real way, going to see a real band, a real comedian, reading a real book by a real author. That, I believe, will become the great hope of the next 50 years.
In some ways, older people — who had far bigger privations to worry about when they were growing up — are among the few who’ve escaped all of this fairly scot-free.
Cottle: What have you personally learned from writing these books as you’ve gone along? I assume you’re now ready to charge in and start your own Thursday Murder Club at some point.
Osman: Oh, God, can you imagine? No, I’ve learned that friendship is incredibly important. I’ve learned that living alongside people who are different from you — even people you disagree with — is incredibly powerful. It feels like something we’re losing, and I try to show that in these books. You’ve got four very different people who then meet many other very different people, and somehow they still find common ground.
I suppose I’ve learned that this capacity — for curiosity, for new adventures, for new friendships — is something we risk losing if we don’t use it. Like local shops or like our arm muscles. If you don’t exercise it, it disappears. As we age, we’re told to focus on strength training for our bodies. I think the same applies emotionally. We need to train ourselves to deepen friendships, to discover new things, to find new avenues. That feels just as important. And really, I learn something new with every book. That’s the lovely thing about it. I’m constantly being taught by these four ridiculous characters.
Cottle: You did mention the loneliness epidemic, which is hitting all age groups and young people, in particular, I suspect. I’ve always thought a lot of these retirement communities feel like college, just without having to go to class.
Osman: I’ve had that exact thought. You are 100 percent right.
Cottle: Who wouldn’t want that? I think that that probably has enormous appeal even for the youngest of young adults. Your mom’s in her 80s. Is she still causing trouble at her retirement community?
Osman: She is. She’s a big name on campus now because of these books as well.
Cottle: Does your mom ever get mad at you for stuff that you’ve written?
Osman: No. When I gave her the very first book, I think she read it in terror — maybe for legal reasons. She thought: You’ve come to this village, and you’re going to write stories about the people who live here.
I told her, “No, no. I just got the vibe of where you are. That’s what I’m taking with me. Everything’s in my head. I’m not writing about anyone.”
Whenever I go down to her village, people pitch me stories. I was there recently, and two of my mom’s friends — Peggy and Sue — started telling me things. One of them said there’s a concert hall they’re thinking of converting into apartments and people are up in arms. I said, “That sounds like a great motive for a murder.” Peggy didn’t look enthusiastic enough, and then Sue said, “There’s a balcony in the concert hall. You could push someone off that and kill them.” I said, “OK, Sue, let’s try that.”
Cottle: Oh, my God, you’ve got researchers.
Osman: They are constantly pitching now. But the truth is, it all has to come out of my own head. You can’t take things from real people. For me, as a ridiculous author, my four characters feel incredibly real. They pitch me story lines all the time, and that’s fine. But in the real world, I can’t take anything from anyone.
Cottle: Your characters are speaking to you at odd hours?
Osman: They are, I’m afraid. That’s terrible, isn’t it?
Cottle: I like that. Having lived in this world and created it, are you looking forward to being older and getting to make your own kind of trouble?
Osman: I mean, we have no choice. We do have a choice: There’s one alternative to getting older, and that’s not getting older. So I guess you have —
Cottle: That got dark.
Richard Osman: Yeah, there’s no point in not looking forward to getting older. I’m certainly looking forward to that different perspective on mortality, on my place in the world and on ego. There are plenty of things I’m not looking forward to, of course. But I’ve already been a baby, a 7-year-old, a teenager, 23 — I’ve done it all. Now I’m 54, and God willing, at some point I’ll be 84. I imagine it’ll feel roughly the same, just another stage of life.
Cottle: You’re ready to rock your 80s.
Osman: Why not? Listen, we wake up in the morning, and we take what life throws at us, right?
Cottle: There you go. I’ll pop my Advil and get my creaky bones out of bed and take on the world.
This has been fantastic. Thank you so much. Everybody I know will be jealous that I got to do this.
Osman: Ah, excellent. Thank you so much.
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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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