I’ll be frank: this year hasn’t been easy. I’m one of the first people to admit I’m sitting in a super-privileged position, and there are loads of people worse off than Mr Wen and I. And yet. It’s a world that’s demanded a certain, self-medicating level of whimsy (and, in some cases, Wimsey) (I’m sorry) in the novels I’m escaping into. I’ve reread Dorothy Sayers, Margaret Maron, and Penny Reid. I’ve joined The Best Niece in Australia on the Keeper of the Lost Cities train, and jumped onto the Inheritance Games bandwagon with The Best Nephew.
To that structured, undemanding happily ever after(ish) end, I was thrilled to find that both Benjamin Stevenson and Richard Osman were releasing new books in their respective series in early October. Both men write mysteries that are cozy in more or less the same way as Sayers and Agatha Christie; their novels are structured reliably. Stevenson would describe it as “not cheating.” I can count on them to resolve in that satisfying, all-loose-ends-tied way that life never seems to.
I discuss books with every colleague at one point or another – I am a recommendation making and taking machine – and one of them has told me that she finds the Ben Stevenson books “meh.” Clearly, I disagree, but more than that, I just think it’s sad that the lighthearted whimsy of a cozy Stevenson mystery doesn’t work for her.
Neither The Impossible Fortune nor Everyone In This Bank Is A Thief are the best entry in their series, but both are predictably comforting, and both are a delight. I mean, clearly not for the murdered, or the characters in peril. But for me.
EITBIAT opens with Ern & Juliette at a cafe in a small rural town, prepping for their interview with a bank manager. Ern’s decided to start a private detective agency, and has been KB’d up and down the coast. This small-town bank represents his last chance. Unluckily, he’s not the only borderline-desperate person in town, and he, as ever, finds himself caught up in chaos.
Stevenson has bought himself a lifetime supply of loyalty from me, between Either Side of Midnight, the Everyone/Ernest series and his stand-up comedy (with his twin, James). As long as he writes the Ern mysteries, I’ll keep reading them. However, this is not the book that will convince you to jump on the bandwagon. It’s a little too clever, a little too tricky, somehow.
Yes, catching up with Ern is like meeting up with an old friend, and the mystery is as cozy as ever – it gave me everything I could have asked for, but it also has eleventy-five different things all going on at once, and I felt like I could see the work it took to align them all (similar to the dissatisfaction I felt with some of the early Chris Hammer novels – take away one or two elements, there’s too much going on!).
Like mid pizza, though, even a not-quite 100% Stevenson is still superior to most of the mystery content going around. I recommend starting the series from the start, with Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, because the body of work is some of the most entertaining I’ve read.
In similar style, I don’t necessarily think that The Impossible Fortune is the best entry in the Thursday Murder Club universe, but I still devoured it. My nan has just moved into an assisted living facility; I hope she has half as much fun as this crew is having. Maybe a little less murder, though.
I feel like TIF splits the team up a little more than they’ve been in previous novels, with Elizabeth grieving, Ron sidelined by a family issue, and Ibrahim working to rehabilitate Connie Johnson. It makes it hard to recover the exact brand of magic previous books (I could just be resistant to change). The central mystery itself – based around an uncrackable code and one of Joanna(Joyce’s daughter)’s wedding guests, could be highly implausible… but who among us would suggest that Elizabeth could be stymied by anything?
There’s a lot going on in this mystery, a lot of fiddly pieces to get into place. It’s a credit to Osman that it doesn’t feel like contrivance so much as a natural result of the main characters’ backgrounds being so disparate and well-established.
Ultimately, the solutions are found when the crew reunites; they’re more than the sum of their parts. These are such charming books – the age of the characters means they have little patience for fools, and can get away with saying so in a way I certainly wish I could. Baseless speculation: I have fears for Ron in the next installment. It always concerns me when a character’s outstanding threads all get neatly tied. Let’s hope I’m wrong, and we have a few years left with the Murder Club yet.
