The ‘Thursday Murder Club’ Author Wants Us to Rethink Aging

0:01Michelle Cottle:This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:14Michelle Cottle:I'm Michelle Cottle, and I cover national politics for New York Times opinion, usually. But I also have a bit of an obsession with the graying of America and the major changes that are coming with an aging population. So 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 new season coming up, people. But this week, it is taking me to talk with Richard Osman, who writes the best-selling mystery novels known as the Thursday Murder Club series.

0:53Michelle Cottle:These books revolve around four residents of this posh retirement village in the British countryside who investigate murders in their spare time. The fifth book, The Impossible Fortune, is out in the States, 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 with me.

1:20Richard Osman:It's an absolute pleasure, Michelle. Lovely to meet you across the ocean.

1:23Michelle 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 am an enormous fangirl of your work. Bordering a little, you know, like minor stalkerishness. Well, that's okay.

1:38Richard Osman:As I say, we have an ocean between us, so I'm safe. It's safer that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect.

1:43Michelle Cottle:But I'm not really a mystery 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, you know, she was not wrong, but I don't want to try to boil them down. So what I want, I want to make you do it. Being reductive. Yes. Characterize for me what you think sets these apart and makes them resonate with readers.

2:09Richard Osman:Yeah, the reductive version would be for people in their 80s, unlikely friends who meet at a retirement village, probably wouldn't have met at any point in their life, have gathered together a lifetime of skills, are living in the bucolic English countryside, a body turns up on their doorstep, and the four of them team up to solve murders. So the reductive version is a lovely, cozy crime mystery. But hopefully, and hopefully that was why your friend recommended it and hopefully why you liked it. It's really, it's about characters. And it's about characters who are slightly older. And it's about unlikely friendships.

2:45Richard Osman:And it's about the world we live in. And it's about what we do to older people and the invisibility they have. And the way we underestimate them. So 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're reading is something about real people living real life, sort of plenty of laughs, plenty of tears, and plenty of murders.

3:07Michelle Cottle:One of the big things that does set 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?

3:25Richard Osman:I really did, actually. you know 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 would you know that could really get my teeth into and my mum lives in a retirement village and you go there and you meet all these people who've lived these extraordinary lives but slightly shut away from you know the the heart of our culture so 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'd done extraordinary things.

3:57Richard Osman:I knew as a huge fan of crime fiction, I knew the murders and the plots can take care of themselves. But I had a kind of bottomless well of character and a bottomless well of experience of stories that I could draw upon with these characters. So yeah, right from the start, I thought it is worth me having a go at this because it feels like if I get the first one right, then others will follow. And so I get the huge advantage of the wisdom of these four characters, as you say, who are at a part of their life where their attitude to risk is differently. Certainly, their attitude to their mortality is different.

4:30Richard Osman:And yeah, I thought, oh, there's plenty for me to write about here.

4:34Michelle Cottle:Your characters are talking about hard stuff like loss, grief, loneliness, assisted dying and dementia. And I feel like you and I have come at some of these same topics just 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 you just don't want to think about it at all. It's just like, nope, nope, I don't want to think about my parents getting old. I don't want to think about getting old. But you, on the other hand, are tackling these things in a way that gives people a really appealing entry point. Murder, friendship, cake baking.

5:08Michelle Cottle:It's like you're sneaking tough issues in there for us to chew over.

5:13Richard Osman:Yeah, sneaking the vegetables under the ketchup. up.

5:17Michelle Cottle:Do you hear from people that they're thinking about these things from readers?

5:23Richard Osman:Yeah, definitely. That's 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 yeah, 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're 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.

5:57Richard Osman:And because I've got a gang of people, I can write about it. And, you know, funnily enough, I write two chapters in a row, one from the perspective of one of the characters who believes in it very much, and one from the perspective of a character who doesn't believe in it. And these two people love each other still, They just happen to disagree on this. But you're getting to discuss something that ordinarily people might pick up the remote control and change the channel or click on the next article along. And that means that lots of people come up to me in the street. I talk about dementia, talk about grief, all of these things.

6:31Richard Osman:And people come and chat to me about it, which I absolutely love.

6:36Michelle Cottle:So you had a family member who suffered through Alzheimer's, right? Yeah. Did that inform how you approach one of the main characters? Husband has, he's suffering from dementia. Did your experience inform how you were writing some of this?

6:51Richard Osman:Yeah, if you talk to anybody who works with dementia patients in any way, they will tell you every single experience is unique. So everything is different. And the dementia often takes on the form of the person with dementia. So it's a very personal illness. So my grandfather had dementia and he's a very, very bright man, a very strong man. He used to be a cop and he was in the army, you know, so he was used to being very, very male. And suddenly the faculties start to go. and speaking to him in his final years many many times and going to visit him and seeing what it was that he remembered what he didn't remember the last things to remain which were which are probably laughter and love i would say were the last bits of him to remain and i wanted to pay tribute to him i wanted to understand him and how he was thinking what his brain was doing and the circuits that were still complete and the circuits that weren't complete.

7:49Richard Osman:And so I'm writing about him really. And the fact that it resonates with lots of other people is great. Every example is slightly different, but there's enough that we all share with this. So yeah, of all the conversations with him, I was constantly inside his head thinking, what is his brain doing now? What's it doing now? Where's it reaching? What's it trying to reach? And what is it actually reaching? And so Stephen, this character who suffers from dementia in the books, I just wanted to give him absolute 100 % humanity. I wanted his thought process to be rational within his own brain. And I was trying to sort of explain how that might be.

8:28And as I say, hopefully the people I talk to certainly have said it resonates.

8:34Richard Osman:And I was just trying to write one man and how his brain was working.

8:38Michelle Cottle:Well, same thing for me. I had this happen with my father who passed away earlier this year. And he was like your grandfather. He was in charge. He was always like self-sufficient, didn't want anybody to help him. And we would have these weird moments where he would think he was being drafted when he was at the doctor's office or he would think that he was interviewing for a job in the presidential administration or something like that. And he was like hard charging and it was just so so reading Stephen is just handled so delicately and so beautifully. I just thought it had to come from at least, you know, partly a personal place.

9:13Richard Osman:Yeah, it is a thing. You know, my granddad came from the really the back streets of Brighton, no money and what have you. And in the end, he was in a residential home, not a million miles from where he grew up, which is often the case. And whenever I go there and it's a big place because there's 20 bedrooms and lots of residents. and he would always just take me aside and he would say, is this my house? And I go, yeah, it is your house. He goes, I've done well for myself, haven't I? And you go, yeah, you have. You have done well for yourself, mate. And that's, you know, it's finding the moments of dignity and humanity in it.

9:47Michelle Cottle:So you had 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 you know that 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 well i really am because

10:22Richard Osman:the one thing 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. You know, a lot of us are scared through life because we think, oh no, but what happens if, what if I lose my job or, you know, the money starts going down or something, you know, when you're older, you know, the worst is going to happen at some time. It's, you know, you've got that perspective. And there's a part in the very first book, I think, where one of the people says, the only people who can tell us what to do now are our doctors and our children.

10:49Richard Osman:And we rarely see our children. So no one's really telling us what to do. And Elizabeth, in the very first book, she says to the cops at one point, she said, well, I'll tell you what you should do. Why don't you arrest me? Why don't you arrest me and lock an 80-year-old woman in the cell? See how much fun that is for you. See how many paperwork you have to do. You know, I'll pretend I think you're my grandson. You know, just do it. And so you realize that actually there is quite a freedom. There's a sort of carte blanche to behave quite badly and quite mischievously and certainly to open doors that you shouldn't be allowed to open.

11:23Richard Osman:And so I absolutely dived into all of that and I take full advantage throughout of their ability to beguile everybody.

11:30Michelle Cottle:See, I'm very much looking forward to being there with them. So 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 and 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.

12:01Richard Osman:Yeah, I think it's fascinating because, you know, the younger readers always say, oh my God, thank you for making these older characters heroes. That's great. It feels very aspirational. Finally, I can't wait till I retire. So the younger people say, thanks for making them heroes. The older readers always say, thank you for not making us the heroes. Thank you for making us flawed and mischievous. And thank you for making us start drinking at 1130 and gossiping and falling in love and out of love. So thank you for writing us as human beings. And my basic starting point with all of this is, and everyone listening to this will have an answer to this question, which is how old do you feel in your head?

12:39Richard Osman:Everybody has a number. There's a number that you stopped at in your ageing where you go, no, that's what I am forever. So my mum, who's 83, she says, I'm kind of 30. And so I'm very aware.

12:52Michelle Cottle:Oh, sweet, mum. Yeah, it's all right, isn't it?

12:54Richard Osman:But I'm very aware that no one has an old brain. You know, everyone is stuck at a certain age. They have old bodies and they're surrounded by old issues, but nobody has an old brain. So I never even think for a single second about the fact that they're 80. Their brains are 27 and 30 and 35 and 40, but the lives they lead have you know they live in very different surroundings so chronologically speaking you

13:22Michelle Cottle:are my age which we'll we'll simply refer to as 50 something yeah let's call we are not let's call

13:28Richard Osman:it that we are not yet seniors or we could say 40 something but that that something would be 14

13:31Michelle Cottle:so yeah yeah that works but i do think we're not yet seniors but i do think for people at our life stage these books really are aspirational yeah not that i'm looking to spend my golden years chasing after murderers. I am. Maybe. I'd love it. But your characters present old age not as a time of life getting narrower and narrower, which it feels like sometimes when you're aging, but of reinventing themselves and expanding their comfort zones, which I have to say is a very comforting thought from certain middle-aged readers eyeing the road ahead. And it sounds like that I'm not the only one and that that's resonating with your readers in there, you know, who are younger than the characters.

14:12Richard Osman:Yeah, the age, the demographics reading this book are insane because they are absolutely about older people, but they're not read in a dominant way by older people. There's people through all of the age groups reading it. And I think that there's an element of wish fulfillment to it because there is an epidemic of loneliness amongst older people. I think there's an epidemic of loneliness, funnily enough, amongst people in their late teens and early 20s now as well for different reasons. But there's a quick fix for it, which is, you know, to foster a sense of community. There will always be people, by the way, who do not want a sense of community.