Catherine Raynes: The Impossible Fortune and Culpability

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman  

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’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it. Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time? 

  

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger  

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret that implicates them in the accident. 
 
During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI. 
 
Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at BE twenty.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Three to twelve. Author Richard Osmond's The Thursday Murder Club
series has broken. All sorts of records are now. The
latest edition in the series has just been published. It's
called The Impossible Fortune. Katherine Rains, our book reviewer, has
read it and she's with us, Now, what do you think, Catherine?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Look, I really love the series and I would highly
recommend that starting at number one and making a way
to this one, which is number five, and the last
book ended with a loss, and Possible Fortune picks up
some time after that has happened, and so you're back
with Elizabeth and Ibriham and Joyce and Ron and the
characters are larger and lighter than life, and they're relatable

(00:51):
and they're human and they have great depth. And in
this book, there's a wedding on the horizon, and the
Thursday Murder Club are all kind of sort of taking
life as it comes. Elizabeth is sort of deep in
her grief, and Joyce is preparing for her daughter Joana's wedding,
and Ron and Abraha are just kind of just there
and as friendly as ever, but then the best man
for the wedding goes missing, and there's a lot of

(01:12):
money on the line, and a crypto scheme and a
murder occurs, and then of course the troops gather to
figure out this puzzle, and as that investigation deepens, things
arise for Ron as well, and there's all hands on
deck to help. And in this edition we also get
to know some of their family members better, particularly Ron's
grandson Kendrick, who's just very funny. And the group dynamic

(01:34):
is very close knit, and the banter is funny and clever,
and as a reader, you're there, You're along for the ride,
you're really invited in, and it's cozy and full of
heart and humor. And as I said, the series is
now five books in and it proceeds to get better
and better, and each novel continues to feel really fresh
and nuanced, and even the you know, even when those

(01:55):
pieces of the plot are seemingly unconnected, all the bits
snap into place. And Osmond is brilliant at crafting this
group of very captivating characters who are all in their eighties,
and orstrating this very intricate mysteries and making you laugh
and tug on your hate strings, and you know it's
very well written, cozy murder mystery and well worth a read.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Great. So That's The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osmond, the
latest in the Thursday Murder Club series. Next up, tell
Us About Culpability by Bruce Holsinger.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
There's a really interesting dynamic to this novel. It's centered
around the collision of what humans think around artificial intelligence
and the responsibility for all of those things. And so
the Cassidy Shaw family are on a road chip and
seventeen year old Charlie is behind the wheel of their
autonomous minivan and his dad, Noah's writing alongside, and Charlie's

(02:46):
mom and sisters are all riding in the back. And
then the van collides with another car and accident is
fatal for those in the other car, And so the
Castidy Shaws are attempting to process this and the impact,
and they end up heading away for this week long
stay in a house in Chesapeake Bay, and Noah, the
dad's trying to hold the family together and working out
how to per TechEd Charlie. But each of the family

(03:08):
members has got secrets, and as those investigations fold, it
becomes very clear that the real cause of the accident
might not be as simple as human error. And so
you get this focus on the dilemmas of Ai. Laurella,
who's the mother, is a leader in the field of
artificial intelligence, and this book raises this very big moral question,
you know, when machines start making the decisions where there's

(03:29):
the responsibility to lie. Is it on the tech? Is
it the people who created it, or is it the
people using it? And so you get this blend of
ethics and technology into this very character focused narrative and
it's a perfect bend between tension and atmosphere and ethics
and morality. And the story keeps moving and you end
up with this novel has the best of thriller and
drama and philosophical inquiry, and it's very well done.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Sounds intriguing, It sounds not just as tobiin. It feels
like the sort of thing that we are actually going
to be grappling with increasingly, right.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
It feels like something that's five years away. Yeah, Like,
you know, autonomous vehicles are here. I mean, you know,
particularly in the States where there's lots of driverless cars
and those sorts of things, and yeah, it doesn't feel
like it's a whole level removed when you're reading it.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
No, no, hey, speaking of car accident's given you are
such a keen fan of Formula one and motorsport. What
did you make of Liam Lawson putting his into the
wall this morning?

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Oh, that was pretty disappointing for him, to be honest,
especially after last weekend. So yeah, I'm sure he's feeling
pretty sad in that garage right now. Yeah, you know,
the weekend's a long time and he's got I have
every hope he's going to pull it back and be
well up there on the grid.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
I hope this doesn't time like the damage is too bad.
But yeah, but pretty frustrating seeing those sparks this morning.
Thank you, Katherine. So Catherine's books for us culpability with
that second one about the self driving car that crashes.
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osmond is her first book.
That's The Thursday Murder Club. But we'll make sure both
of those are up on the website so you can
track them down as well.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to Newstalks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast, asked on iHeartRadio