The Impossible Fortune

The Impossible Fortune (2025) is the fifth installment of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series. The first book in the series was an international bestseller, which was adapted into a feature film, produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Chris Columbus. The subsequent installments have also landed on the New York Times Bestseller lists, including The Impossible Fortune, which debuted at #1. The fifth novel in the series follows the four friends—Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim—as they investigate one man’s disappearance and the death of his business partner, seeking the two halves of a code needed to access a crypto-fortune. Their adventures highlight intergenerational tension, managing the downsides of aging, including the loss of loved ones, and the importance of friendship, family, and community.

This guide is based on the 2025 Penguin Random House hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of physical and emotional abuse, illness and death, and attempted suicide.

Plot Summary

Joyce, a widowed former nurse, writes about her daughter, Joanna’s, upcoming nuptials to Paul, a man she met online six months ago. Joyce notes that she and Joanna had many disagreements about the wedding, but Joyce remains excited for the celebration. At the wedding, Paul’s best man, Nick Silver, tells Elizabeth, a former spy for MI6, that someone is trying to kill him by placing a bomb under his car. Elizabeth, who’s been grieving the death of her husband for the past year, feels herself coming out of the fog of grief. Local drug dealer Connie Johnson is a patient and friend of Ibrahim, a psychiatrist who counseled her while she was incarcerated. At Ibrahim’s suggestion, she begins mentoring Tia Malone, a small-time felon who aspires to pull off bigger robberies. She asks for Connie’s help robbing a Rolex supplier. Ibrahim encouraged Connie to share her wisdom with others, believing she would find mentorship rewarding; he does not anticipate that she will mentor Tia into a life of crime.

Elizabeth looks at Nick’s pictures of the bomb, which is still under the car at his house. Nick says that whoever is trying to kill him wants his code. He and his business partner, Holly Lewis, each have half of the full code needed to unlock a safe at their cold storage facility. Only Davey Noakes, a former drug dealer, and Lord Townes, a former banker, know the value of the safe’s contents. Elizabeth agrees to meet Nick the following day. Joyce is happy Elizabeth is being “mysterious” again.

Suzi Lloyd points a gun at her husband, Danny, a small-time criminal who abuses her and her ten-year-old son, Kendrick. After Danny beats Suzi this final time and gives her a black eye, Suzi threatens him with the gun and tells him that he’s leaving. She’s packed his bag and sent a picture of her bruises to her brother, Jason, a local celebrity boxer with ties to the criminal underworld. Danny knows Jason will kill him. Both Jason and his dad, Ron, a local union activist and one of the novel’s four protagonists, have appeared in each of the previous books in the series.

Elizabeth and Joyce go to the meeting with Nick while Ron battles a brutal hangover from the wedding. Jason arrives at Ron’s house with Kendrick, but remains cagey about what has happened between Danny and Suzi. Ron can tell Jason is hiding something, and this makes him feel loved but also old. Elizabeth tells Joyce about her conversation with Nick, but when they arrive at the address on his card, he’s not there. Elizabeth calls Donna, a local police officer and friend, to report a break-in at Nick’s address. Meanwhile, Connie and Tia plan their heist.

Lord Robert Townes thinks about his dwindling estate, but hopes his meeting with Holly and Nick will change his fortune. At Nick’s office, Elizabeth, Joyce, and Donna discover that it’s been ransacked, but Elizabeth finds a Post-it note from Nick, asking for her help. She asks Joyce to get Holly’s number from Paul. Joyce messages Ron to pick them up. Ron picks up Joyce and Elizabeth, who plan to go to Nick’s home. Elizabeth wants to remove the bomb from the car and take it to an old friend. However, when they find the car, the bomb is gone.

Joanna reflects that she’s told Paul little lies over the course of their relationship, but nothing major, and she wonders if he has told her any big lies. Joyce and Elizabeth visit Elizabeth’s friend, Jasper, another former spy, who says the bomb is real and deadly. Joyce asks about Jasper’s collection of porcelain cats, and he says he hates them. She feels bad for Jasper because he doesn’t know how to dress or what to do with himself since his wife’s death.

The Thursday Murder Club (TMC) has dinner with Holly, who is keen to find Nick. She describes their cold storage facility, the Compound, as a vault filled with small safes. Early on, she and Nick accepted 5,000 Bitcoin as payment from a client, and it is now worth 350 million pounds. Recently, they went to Davey Noakes and Lord Townes for advice on how to sell it. Holly cannot access it without Nick, and there’s a lawyer who has both codes. If one of them dies, the other gets their code. A few minutes after Holly leaves, there’s an explosion outside. Holly’s car has burst into flames with her inside it. Elizabeth snatches Holly’s phone from the inferno, hoping the SIM card survived the blast. Meanwhile, Paul receives texts that seem to be from Nick, but Paul suspects something is amiss because Nick never calls him “Paul.” He asks Nick via text to answer a question only Nick would know, but the texter is unable to answer the question.

Ron visits Davey, who says he’s the client who paid Holly and Nick with the Bitcoin. Joanna and Paul show the TMC Nick’s texts, and they agree that the texts are not from Nick. Joyce and Elizabeth return to Jasper’s with Holly’s SIM card. They discover that Holly made a call just before her car exploded, and Jasper gives Elizabeth the number. Elizabeth has it traced while Joyce offers to help Jasper box up the cat figurines. Elizabeth gets a name and says they must go, but Joyce insists that they help Jasper first. She has seen new mugs and the teabags laid out as though he hopes they will stay. Later, the club gathers at Ron’s. Elizabeth wants him to question Bill Benson, the Compound’s security guard, while she and Joyce visit Jill Usher, the person Holly called right before she died.

Ron meets Bill in a pub, and they immediately hit it off. When Ron mentions Nick’s disappearance and Holly’s death, Bill agrees to take Ron to the Compound. Joyce and Elizabeth visit Jill and learn nothing of value, though Jill’s husband, Jamie, acts suspiciously. Elizabeth asks Donna to look into Jill. Bill shows Ron the basement entrance to the Compound, and he mentions that Lord Townes has an upcoming appointment to see the vault. To get into Nick and Holly’s safe, Ron will need Bill, the codes, and a client of the Compound, to scan their thumbprint. Over lunch with Connie and Tia, Ibrahim commends Tia’s work ethic, not realizing she intends to rob an armored truck. During the conversation, he learns that Connie is a Compound client.

Danny arranges to have Jason and Suzi murdered by a contract killer. Elizabeth and Joyce visit Lord Townes and infer that his estate is bankrupt. He claims he wouldn’t kill Holly because he stood to earn 10 million pounds helping her. Paul admits to Joanna that he and Holly used to date in college and got back together briefly just before Paul met Joanna. He tells Joanna that Holly is a difficult person. Jeremy Jenkins, Holly and Nick’s attorney, opens Holly’s file and discovers it contains two envelopes: one marked in case of her death and one in case of Nick’s death. Jeremy tries to call Nick but gets no answer.

Jill’s husband, Jamie, has multiple convictions, so Donna suggests Holly was trying to reach him, not Jill, when she called just before the car explosion. Meanwhile, Tia’s warehouse heist starts well, but she has to abandon the armored truck she’s stolen when an alarm sounds and the truck shuts down. As she flees the scene, Connie picks her up and takes her to Ibrahim’s to lay low. Connie admits to Ibrahim that she’s been helping Tia plan a heist that went wrong. Ibrahim’s disappointment in her upsets Connie, who apologizes to both him and Tia.

An Amazon driver rings Jason’s doorbell. Jason tells him to leave the package, but the man says Jason must sign for it. When Jason says he can’t come to the door, the man starts shooting indiscriminately. Jason and Kendrick escape out the back of the house and escape to Ibrahim’s for safety. Both Ron and Jason are adamant about not speaking to the police, noting that “no grassing” is part of their code. Jason finally admits to Ron that Danny abused Suzi, and Ron says they have to “be smart” about taking Danny out. When Connie learns of Suzi’s abuse, she offers to help.

Elizabeth meets with Jamie and asks if he knows Holly. He tells her he cons banks, but he’s not a killer. Elizabeth wonders if Holly dialed a wrong number. Suddenly, she realizes Holly wasn’t calling someone at all. Lord Townes retrieves a small box from his safe at the Compound. Elizabeth tells her friends that Holly dialed her own phone number, followed by her code. Ibrahim shows Tia and Kendrick the printouts of the texts Paul received from the mystery caller pretending to be Nick. Tia and Kendrick work out that each of Nick’s texts contains words that spell out a number.

Danny, who has fled to Portugal, flies back to England after his hitman fails to kill Jason. Joanna watches the facility’s CCTV recordings on her computer, which Paul helped her access. Joanna wonders if Holly visited the Compound on their wedding day and checks the footage. Joanna spots Holly on the CCTV footage and calls her mother. A plan is born: Ron and Connie call Bill and meet him at the Compound with the Bitcoin code. As a client, Connie accesses the Compound with her thumbprint, and she and Ron retrieve the Bitcoin from Holly and Nick’s safe, but they don’t immediately reconnect with the group afterward.

Ron sits in the darkness at his girlfriend, Pauline’s, house, and Danny walks in with a gun. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Joyce, Joanna, and Paul visit Davey, who admits that Holly told him she’d planted a bomb under Nick’s car. He says he went to Nick’s house to remove the bomb and warn Nick, but Nick wasn’t home. Davey put the bomb in Holly’s passenger seat with a note that said, “Play fair,” but she must have set it off. Finally, Davey confesses that the “Bitcoin” with which he paid them 10 years ago was just a string of letters and numbers he wrote down. It’s worthless. As long as Holly and Nick never tried to cash it out, his con wouldn’t be discovered, so he kept encouraging them to hold onto it. Holly and Nick argued over whether or not to cash out—Holly wanted to, but Nick refused—so she tried to kill him to gain access to the money.

Ron parts ways with Connie and returns home with the numbers from the safe. Danny, who has been tipped off about the Bitcoin by Connie, accosts him at gunpoint and demands the code. Ron agrees to give it to him if Danny will give Ron what he wants in exchange: cancel the hits on Jason and Suzi and never contact either of them or Kendrick again. Danny calls the killer on speaker and cancels the hits. Suddenly, an armed officer swarms out of the bedroom and arrests Danny. Ron and Jason have broken their “no grassing” code to keep Suzi and Kendrick safe.

Lord Townes is on a boat in the English Channel. He has the box from his safe, which contains a gun. Something has always come along to save him in the 11th hour when he’s attempted to die by suicide in the past. He looks around, hoping for a friendly ship bringing good news. Just as he’s about to pull the trigger, he spots a ship in the distance. Meanwhile, Ibrahim forgives Ron for not telling him about his plan to catch Danny, and Ron shares his heartfelt love with his friend. Elizabeth sets up a meeting between Tia and an old colleague at MI6 to get Tia trained as a spy. Joyce considers whose story this really is and decides that it is Suzi, Jasper, and Lord Townes’s: those people who live quietly, sometimes suffering, and trying their best.

Nick spends almost nine weeks at a Travelodge. He has faith that Elizabeth will find him when it is safe. He turns on the radio, hears a song that Paul dedicated to him. Nick immediately calls Paul, who tells him it’s safe to resurface.