An Unmissable New Mystery: Read an Extract from The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

An Unmissable New Mystery: Read an Extract from The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

They show you how to make bombs on the internet. If you know where to look.

What to buy, where to buy it from. How to fit the whole thing together. There are even videos. Men in balaclavas with screwdrivers. Soldering wires on tidy workbenches in breeze-block garages.

They don’t really tell you about the risks. But the risks stand to reason. Be careful with explosives, that doesn’t need to be spelled out to anyone, surely? No one needs to say, ‘Don’t try this at home,’ do they?

There are instructions for big bombs, small bombs, nail bombs, chemical bombs, all the bombs you could ever want to make.

Small to medium was the right choice here. Stable enough to carry around, powerful enough to kill.

In the end the easiest thing to do was go to one of the websites that does all the work for you. Custom-make the bomb to your specifications, deliver it, even help you to place the thing if that’s what you need. This particular company had received very good reviews. They even offered a money-back guarantee if the bomb failed to go off. They’re called ‘Boom or Bust’.

It’s not cheap, when you add up the expertise, the manufacturing costs, the delivery and, most expensive of all, the secrecy of the whole thing. If you want to know the actual cost of a human life, it’s somewhere around twenty-seven thousand pounds. But no tax or VAT. For the obvious reasons.

Worth the extra few quid though. When the bomb finally goes off, money is not going to be an issue, is it?

It’s not all about money, of course. Quite the opposite in some ways.

Okay, then, no time to waste.

Time is ticking, and it’s not the only thing…

Buy a copy of The Impossible Fortune here.

Publisher details

The Impossible Fortune
Author
Richard Osman
Publisher
Penguin
Genre
Fiction
Released
23 September, 2025
ISBN
9780241743997

Synopsis

Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal.

But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who fears for their life, the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code and will stop at nothing to get it. Plunged back into their most explosive investigation yet, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?

Richard Osman
About the author

Richard Osman

Richard Osman is a creative director for Endemol UK. He has worked as an executive producer on numerous shows including 8 Out of 10 Cats and 10 O'Clock Live. Richard rose to fame presenting Pointless with Alexander Armstrong. Richard's popularity and tremendous knowledge of trivia led to him presenting his own BBC quiz,Two Tribes along with Insert NameHere, Child Genius and Richard Osman's House of Games. He is also a regular on panel shows such as Have I Got News For You and writes a column for the Radio Times.

Books by Richard Osman

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