WALDEN’S WORLD

When the truth really is stranger than fiction

When Richard Osman told his mother he’d written a novel, she was delighted. Then the Pointless presenter explained that it was set in a plush retirement village, and her heart sank. You see Brenda Wright lived in a plush Sussex retirement village herself, and was “desperately worried” that her friends and neighbours might believe the characters in his bestselling The Thursday Murder

Club were based on them.

Speaking for the first time about her son’s literary success on Sunday, 79-year-old Wright described the relief she felt after speedreading an early copy of the book. “I got to the end and I thought, there’s nothing in there that could upset anybody, because we’ve got some quite touchy people [here].”

I can relate to the desperate worry and the touchy people – if not Osman’s sales figures. Ever since my thriller, Payday, was published earlier this month, I’ve been fielding messages and emails from former colleagues who are convinced that the exploitative and misogynistic boss who meets a nasty end (non-spoiler alert: this happens on page one) is that male boss we shared years back. Then there are the friends who persist in misidentifying themselves as one of the three key female suspects.

The irony is that whenever one does draw a character straight from life, that person inevitably fails to recognise themselves, and I keep waiting for someone to start their acknowledgements: “Thank you all for being so un-self-aware.”