Title: The Thursday Murder Club
Author(s) Name(s): Richard Osman
Published in: September, 2020
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- unconventional thrillers,
- funny thrillers,
- witty humour and funny dialogue,
- whodunit murder mysteries,
- unsolved murders,
- crime fiction,
- slow-paced stories,
- character-driven novels,
- detective stories in quirky settings,
- mystery and suspense,
- fake identities and conmen,
- contemporary thrillers, and
- murder mysteries.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- murder,
- death,
- drugs,
- poisoning, and
- violence.
Right from the beginning, Osman’s writing gets you laughing. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the book is packed with wit given his past career as a comedy show producer. Also, the book/series has another interesting aspect to it that it is the total opposite of a thrilling, spine-chilling murder; this is an easy-to-read, yet interesting cozy mystery. Which is also filled with plenty of jokes and you won’t see it coming, when you are reading what feels like an ordinary narration of an ordinary day, there would be a couple of paragraphs inserted there to make very simple moments in everyday life look really funny.
The Thursday Murder Club is the first book in the series of thriller books that go by this name. Unlike the typical thriller or murder mystery where you have a younger, tough cop or agent or ex-military professional doing all the detective work, this novel series involves four retired individuals living in a community for old people doing all the detective work on unsolved murders from the past. Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce are in their eighties and live in Coopers Chase, a safe community that’s more like a village by itself, where hundreds of old people live, where friends and fellow residents are like family. Joyce is a retired nurse, the quieter woman who is observant but enjoys watching Elizabeth in action, Ron is a well-built, big man, who was a trader and a union leader and has a son Jason Ritchie, who is a retired boxer, Ibrahim is a fitness-conscious man, a retired psychiatrist of Egyptian origin, and Elizabeth is the most extroverted yet mysterious, spontaneous one with a charming personality, the one in charge, who is an ex-spy and has a good network of experts from different fields. It was Elizabeth who first started the club with her best friend, Penny, who is an ex police officer and is now bed-ridden, without the capacity to hear. These four secretly meet in a room every Thursday hoping to find criminals who got away in old cases the police could not close.
The author introduces other characters one by one, ensuring that the reader gets a good hang of their different personalities, even for the side characters, so you find yourself easily immersed in the story while also being detached. PC Donna is a constable at their local police station, a young, ambitious woman dreaming of her career transformation, that one day she would get to work in homicide cases. There are also DCI Chris Hudson, Donna’s senior at the Fairhaven police station, Joanna, Joyce’s daughter and an entrepreneur, Father Mathew Mackie, a Catholic preiest, Bernard Cottle, another old resident at Cooper’s Chase, Jason Ritchie, Ron’s son and a celebrity ex-boxer, Bogdan, Ian’s intelligent and strong handyman, a local farmer Gordon Playfair, his daughter Karen, an IT administrator, and many more.
Interesting Quote: “We all have a sob story, but we don’t all go around killing people.”
Ian Ventham is the greedy business man who built this place, Coopers Chase, and he is hated by many people. He plans to expand the place and make more money, but that is going to require manipulating many people, which he is used to doing; he also wants to cut ties off with his builder Tony Curran because the last time Tony had outsmarted him to get a big share of the profits. Tony is no nice man either; he has a history of violence and being involved in the drug business, which he covered up by partnering as a builder with Ian. He has several police records of small crimes and interviews of him in a case or two related to someone’s death. Bogdan Jankowski is another acquaintance of Ian’s, one who Ian plans to replace Tony with, after he cuts Tony off.
Soon, Ian puts his plan to action, informs everyone at Coopers’ Chase in the name of a “consulation” meeting that he is going to start his development project, which leaves everyone annoyed because they don’t want their locality disturbed. And exactly as he had planned, he takes Tony outside, where others can all see the two, then fires Tony, knowing that Tony can’t physically assault him with many others watching. Soon, Tony is bludgeoned to death in the kitchen of his own house. Beside his body is a mysterious photograph of three men from his past. Who is the murderer?
In a village where nothing interesting generally happens, when a murder occurs, members of The Thursday Murder Club get excited and start investigating the case, whether or not the police will allow them to do that. Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce are not the stereotyped old people, helpless and ailing, always dependent on others. Instead, they are sharp, self-aware, and skilled in their own ways, use their knowledge, expertise, experience, and their age to their advantage to solve murders simply because they are curious. Often, amusingly, they are a step ahead of even the police! As they go about their investigation, while also caring for one another and their community, they display strength, wit, and enthusiasm. Chris Hudson and Donna struggle to keep these four within their limits and fail drastically, which is all hilarious!
Aiming to solve this, Elizabeth comes up with a series of plans to collect information from various sources in her network, including the local police station, and she takes the help of her friends Ron, Ibrahim aka “Ib” and Joyce, too. Together, the four of them trick others whenever they have to get some details or do something important, and they successfully get what they want. PC Donna quickly learns that these people, especially Elizabeth, can’t be mistaken for weak people, so she is excited to work with them in unconventional ways, too. While other things remain normal, Ian brings diggers early one morning into the cemetery to dig up the place to start his next development project. The residents and the Father had all tried to talk him out of it because they did not want the buried bodies to be disturbed and taken elsewhere, but this time, they boldly put up a protest. It is from this point that the story starts getting more interesting. While some people join hands and prevent the diggers from entering the graveyard, Elizabeth quietly goes the other way, catches Bogdan alone and interrogates him, pretending to be just curious, asking him if Ian and he had something to do with Tony’s murder. Soon, she joins the others and Father Mackie also joins the rest of them. Bogdan, left alone on the other end of the place begins digging with a shovel, and to his surprise, he discovers bones, a skeleton, which is outside an oak coffin box – how could that be? How could a body have gotten out of a coffin box in a graveyard? An unexpected fight occurs among the people there, in front of the graveyard, and another person drops dead, just like that!
While the author does make us think about the difficulties of old age, he also shows them in new light, which is a unique aspect of this book series. There are also several characters with shady pasts, so the mystery deepens. The Thursday Murder Club is an amusing, slow-paced, character-driven story, with most of the book consisting of inner monologues or funny dialogue. Despite all the unexpected twists, it still has a funny tone and with all the old people drama and shady characters, it feels like a cozy mystery. I would give this a 4-star rating; if you like this one, you would most likely want to read other books in the series as well.
