← The Opinions
The Opinions
The ‘Thursday Murder Club’ Author Wants Us to Rethink Aging
00:26:38
Richard Osman, the author of a beloved murder mystery series, discusses the revolutionary act of growing old.
Loading summary
Transcript77 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Juliette from New York Times Games and I'm here talking to fans about our games. You play New York Times Games?
- [00:06]
B
Yes, every day.
- [00:07]
A
There's this little tab down here called Friends, so you can add your friend.
- [00:11]
C
That feels new to me.
- [00:12]
A
It is. It's nice to have the social aspect. Oh, my God.
- [00:15]
B
And you have all the Times.
- [00:16]
A
That's crazy, right? You can look at spelling bee wordle connections. Oh, my God. Amazing. Love that I have to get the app.
- [00:23]
B
New York Times Games subscribers can now add Friends in the Friends tab. Find out more@nytimes.com games. 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.
- [00:46]
A
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 Osmond, who writes the best selling mystery novels known as the Thursday Murder Club series. 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 Osmond. Welcome. Thank you so much for doing this with me.
- [01:51]
C
It's an absolute pleasure, Michelle. Lovely to meet you across the ocean.
- [01:55]
A
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.
- [02:08]
C
Well, that's okay. As I say, we have an ocean between us. So I'm safe.
- [02:12]
A
It's safer that way.
- [02:13]
C
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
- [02:14]
A
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.
- [02:34]
C
Yes.
- [02:35]
A
Characterized for me, what you think sets these apart and makes them resonate with readers.
- [02:40]
C
Yeah. The reductive version would be. Yeah. For people in their 80s, unlikely friends, who, 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, cosy 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, and it's about the world we live in, and it's about what we do to. 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 lives with plenty of laughs, plenty of tears, and plenty of murders.
- [03:39]
A
One of the big things that does set these stories apart from 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 gender justice. Did you know you were gonna wind up delving into these existential issues when you started all this?
- [03:56]
C
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 I could really get my teeth into. And my mom 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 heart of our culture. So the second I had this idea, I was aware I had a gang of people who were very different from each other, but a gang of people who'd done extraordinary things. 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 and 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. Cause it feels like if I get the first one right, then. And so I get a 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 different, certainly their attitude to their mortality is different. And, yeah, I thought, oh, there's plenty for me to write about here.
- [05:05]
A
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 point, some. 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 they 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. You know, murder, friendship, cake baking. It's like you're sneaking tough issues in there for us to chew over.
- [05:44]
C
Yeah, sneaking the vegetables under the ketchup.
- [05:48]
A
Do you hear from people that they're thinking about these things from readers?
- [05:54]
C
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. You know, there's always something else we could read that's. 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. 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. Who doesn't believe in it. And these two people love each other still. They just happen to disagree on this. But, yeah, you are 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 and I talk about dementia, talk about grief, all of these things, and people come and chat to me about it, which I absolutely love.
- [07:07]
A
So you had a family member who suffered through Alzheimer's, right?
- [07:11]
C
Yeah.
- [07:11]
A
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.
- [07:22]
C
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 was a very, very bright man, a very strong man, used to be a cop and he was in the army, so he was used to being very, very male. And suddenly the faculty 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 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 and what his brain was doing and the circuits that were still complete and the circuits that weren't complete. 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. And as I say, hopefully, the people I talk to certainly have said it resonates. And that's, you know, I was just trying to write one man and how his brain was working.
- [09:10]
A
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. It's just handled so delicately and so beautifully. I just thought it had to come from at least, you know, partly a personal place.
- [09:44]
C
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'd go there, and it was a big place, cause 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.
- [10:18]
A
So you'd 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. 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 something.
- [10:52]
C
Well, I really am because 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 are you, you know, the money starts going down or something? You know, when you're older, you know, the worst is gonna happen at some time. It's, you know, you've got that perspective. And there's a part in very first book, I think, where some, one of the people 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. 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've. 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. And so I absolutely dived into all of that. And I take full advantage throughout of their ability to beguile everybody.
- [12:02]
A
See, I'm very much. 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 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.
- [12:32]
C
Yeah, I think it's fascinating because the younger readers always say, oh, my God, thank you for making these older characters. 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 11:30 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? Everybody has a number. There's a number that you stopped at in your aging 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.
- [13:23]
A
Oh, sweet mom.
- [13:24]
C
Yeah, it's all right, isn't it? But I'm very aware that no one has an old brain. 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.
- [13:51]
A
So chronologically speaking, you are my age, which we'll simply refer to as 50 something. Yeah, let's call it we are not yet. Let's call it that we are not Yet.
- [14:00]
C
Or we could say 40 something, but that something would be 14.
- [14:03]
A
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. Not that I'm looking to spend my golden years chasing after murderers, maybe I'd love it. But your characters present old age not as a time of life getting narrow 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 for 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.
- [14:43]
C
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. There's an academic of loneliness amongst older people. I think there's an epidemic of loneliness, funnily enough, amongst people in their late teens and early twenties 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. And that is absolutely fine. Where my mum lives, if you don't want to see anybody, you just shut your front door. You won't see anyone, but if you want to see people, you open your front door. And that feels to me like something to aspire towards. And the fact that these books exist and this thought exists now that this is a way to live, this is a way you can spend your later years in a community that feels like a positive thing. But that idea that as we get older we fade into the background and we fade away and we fade away and we disappear. It doesn't need to be, you know, we can actually grow, we can become more visible, we can certainly become noisier, we can become more trouble as we get older. And yeah, that's my goal. That's my goal as well. I mean, that's sort of everyone's goal, isn't it, to just to continue causing trouble?
- [16:04]
A
Well, when I travel around doing these stories on, you know, senior housing, senior transportation, you know, how I'm always on the lookout for where looks like it's the most fun. Like is it the retirement communities in Florida? Is it the group housing in Portland? I'm like taking notes. I've told the office that I intend to be there like senior community bureau at some point in time because I love the idea of a community. I know a lot of people want to age in place in their Home that they've lived in forever and ever and ever. But I'm like, one of the joiners.
- [16:38]
C
I want to go, yeah, fun is the thing, right? I mean, through. In every age of our life, we're told what life is about. And so when we're a kid, oh, this is about education, and it's about getting to, you know, high school and then getting to the right college. And then when we're in our 20s, you go, oh, no, it's about. This is about climbing the ladder. This is the thing you have to do is you have to. That's the point of life, is climbing this ladder and getting promoted and getting extra money. And then it's. Oh, it's about having a family. It's about raising a family, it's about raising a community and seeing what the next generation is. But you reach an age where they've run out of stuff to tell you what life is. They can't give you another. They can't say, oh, by the way, the thing to do now is X. And so you realize I can sort of just do what I want. And looking back, I could have done what I wanted all the way through. Oh, my God, what was I thinking?
- [17:24]
A
Yeah.
- [17:24]
C
They tell you, yeah, and you finally go, oh, I'm allowed to have fun. I'm allowed to be amongst people. I'm allowed to laugh. I am allowed to just enjoy myself. I need to look after people and make sure everyone in my community is safe and being looked after. But I am allowed to just have fun. And that feels like quite a revolutionary act.
- [17:44]
A
So these books have been licensed in something like 40 languages or 40 countries at this point?
- [17:49]
C
It's a lot of languages.
- [17:50]
A
Yeah, it's a lot. But is there anything peculiarly British about the approach to aging and your stories that you think might not translate all that well or that well?
- [18:00]
C
I thought so. I thought maybe in America, you guys are like us, which is. You know, we do tend to. We're very culturally dominated by Instagram influencers in their mid-20s. But, you know, in the Mediterranean countries and the Arabic countries and China, of course, they revere their elders and this won't resonate, but every time you go to any of those countries, they go, oh, no, this is. We're exactly the same. We treat older people terribly. You say to the Chinese, no, you don't. Doesn't it? You don't treat them. They go, yeah, yeah. Honestly, that's why we love these books. So I was amazed at how universal this is. I knew it was the Case in my country. I knew it was the case in lots of Western European countries and in the States, but I was not aware that, you know, I'd go to India and people would say, finally, finally someone said it. You know, I find that fascinating.
- [18:50]
A
So 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? I mean, have you a sense of its impact?
- [19:04]
C
I think if you're over 80, that's probably the generation who's just about escaped scot free from social media. I think they find that it's a way of following that. You know, my mum can follow her granddaughter on Instagram. That's not something that people used to be able to do, but at the same time it doesn't drive them completely insane like it does everyone in their 40s and 50s. Because we grew up without it, we have not been able to live our lives without fully engaging in it. So it drives us crazy. It's. Our generation has been absolutely, completely addled by social media. It's absolutely thrown us completely off course, our compass. I think everyone in their 20s, sort of, they have very different issues with it, but at least they grew up with it. At least they're natives and my kids.
- [19:47]
A
Know how to navigate it.
- [19:48]
C
Yeah, exactly. You know, psychologically, to them it's not, oh my God, what's this now? Because it's like, you know, we grew up with television and the generation before, we're going, oh my God, you know, what's this? And I think that social media will have eventually, you know, an opposite reaction and the same will happen with AI, I think, which is, and this speaks to your comment about community and, you know, those things that AI will do a million different things, but one thing it will definitely do is send us back into the arms of real human beings. It will absolutely place a huge premium on sitting across from someone real, talking to them about real things in a real way, going to see a real band, going to see a real comedian reading a real book by a real author, you know, that stuff will become the great hope of the next 50 years. So I think the older people who've had much bigger privations to worry about when they were growing up, I think it's one of the few things that they've escaped fairly scot free.
- [20:46]
A
So what have you learned personally from writing these books as you've gone along? I'm like, I assume you're now ready to charge in and Start your own Thursday murder group at some point.
- [20:55]
C
Oh, God, can you imagine? No. I've learned that friendship is incredibly important. I've learned that. I think our generation's a bit like this. Certainly the older generation's a bit more that the importance of living with people and liking people who you disagree with is a very, very powerful thing to have. And it feels like something that we're losing. And that's something it would be amazing to. You know, I try in these books all the time to show, well, we've got four very different people here, and they come into the orbit of lots of other very different people. But we find common ground in all sorts of things. So, you know, I guess I've learned that. I guess I've learned that that's something we're in danger of losing. And I guess, like local shops and like arm muscles, there is something we lose if we don't use it. And that is our capacity for curiosity and our capacity for new adventures and new friendships. And it's very, very, very easy to let that go, I think. And I think it's probably one of the most important things to not let go. In the same way, you know, you do have to go down to the gym, and when you get in your 50s and 60s, you're only supposed to do strength training. I think the same is the case for our emotional lives as well. There's a different sort of training you need to do, which is, oh, I'm going to fit in. I'm going to make sure I'm this. I think you have to go, oh, no. I need to deepen friendships and find new things and find new avenues. So I hope I've learned that as well. I learn something new every book, though, so that's the lovely thing about it. I'm constantly being taught things by these four ridiculous characters.
- [22:35]
A
I mean, you did mention the loneliness epidemic, which is hitting all age groups and young people in particular, I suspect. Look at a group of folks who. I've always thought a lot of these retirement communities strike me as college without having to go to class.
- [22:49]
C
Do you know what? I've had that exact thought. You are 100% right. Yeah.
- [22:53]
A
I'm like, who wouldn't want that? So I think that that probably has enormous appeal, even for the youngest of young adults. So your mom's in her 80s?
- [23:04]
C
Yes.
- [23:06]
A
She's still causing trouble at her retirement community.
- [23:08]
C
I mean. Yeah. I mean, she's a big name on campus now because of these books as well.
- [23:13]
A
Well, does mom ever get mad at you for stuff that you've written?
- [23:16]
C
No, I think when I gave her the very first book, I think she read it in terror, just for legal purposes. I think she thought, oh, you've come to this village and you're just gonna write stories about the people who live here? And I was like, no, no, I got the. I got the vibe of where you are. That's the thing I'm taking with me. I said, then I promise you, everything is in my brain. Whenever I go down to her village, they pitch me stories, always. I was down there recently, and these two women friends of my mum, and genuinely, they're called Peggy and Sue. Okay.
- [23:44]
A
Oh.
- [23:45]
C
It was a bit on the nose. But anyway, that's what they called. And one of them is saying, oh, you know, there's a concert hall here, and they're thinking of turning it into new apartments. They're gonna convert it into apartments, and people are up in arms. And it feels to me, Richard, like that would be a really good motive for a murder. So that's Peggy. And I'm going, oh, okay, Peggy. And I obviously didn't look enthusiastic enough because then sue said, oh, and there's a balcony in the concert hall. You could push someone off that and kill them. I said, okay, okay, Sue. Okay, let's try and do that.
- [24:12]
A
So. Oh, my God.
- [24:13]
C
They are constantly. Yeah, but I can't. You have to. It has to come out of your own brain. You can't take anything from actual human beings. You know, I've. To me. Cause I'm an. I'm a ridiculous author. My four characters are incredibly real. So they pitch me storylines, and that's fine, but people in the real world, I have to just. Yeah, no one's been.
- [24:33]
A
The characters are speaking to you at odd hours.
- [24:35]
C
They are, I'm afraid. Yeah, they are. That's terrible, isn't it?
- [24:38]
A
Okay, I like that. So having lived in this world and created this world, are you looking forward to being older and getting to make your own kind of trouble?
- [24:47]
C
I mean, we have no choice. Well, we do have a choice. There's one alternative to getting older, and that's not getting older. So I guess you have to.
- [24:54]
A
Well, that got dark.
- [24:54]
C
Yeah, but you know what I mean, there's no point not looking forward to getting older. I supp. I'm certainly looking forward to, you know, that different perspective on mortality and that different perspective of my place in the world and what it is I'm doing here, and that different perspective on ego. I'm certainly looking forward to that. Lots and lots of things I'm not looking forward to. But, you know, I used to be a baby, right? And it's like, so I've done that then. I used to be seven years old at one point. I've done that. I used to be a teenager. I used to be 23. I've done it all. Now I'm 54. At some point, I will, God willing, be 84. So I imagine it'll be roughly the same. You know, I'm still the same.
- [25:32]
A
You're ready to rock your 80s?
- [25:34]
C
Yeah. You know, why not? I mean, listen, we wake up in the morning and we take what life throws at us, right?
- [25:38]
A
There you go. I'll pop my Advil and get my creaky bones out of bed and take it on the world. All right. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much. Everybody now I know is very jealous that I got to do this.
- [25:50]
C
Thank you so much.
- [26:13]
B
If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur Vishaka Darba, Kristina Samulewski and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Aman Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.