Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club is a classic-style murder mystery set in an English retirement village called Cooper’s Chase. The main characters have been meeting weekly on Thursdays in the village’s Jigsaw Room to discuss cold cases supplied by one of the club’s members, a retired police officer. When someone associated with new construction on the grounds is murdered, the club steps in to help the police investigate.
The Thursday Murder Club is a quick, fun read. In the vein of an Agatha Christie novel, it doesn’t rely on gore or graphic violence to move the plot; the characters are the focus. But don’t worry, it has plenty of good clues, red herrings, and quick side mysteries to keep things moving and interesting.
The retirement village setting informs many of the themes, including love and loss, loneliness and friendship, staying engaged in life and finding your passions, and growing from who you used to be to reach a new stage in your journey. As we get to know them, the residents reveal bits and pieces of their lives, past and present. Elizabeth is a very well-connected, inquisitive, and intelligent ex-government something or other, her former life hinted at but not explained. MI-6, perhaps? Joyce is a retired nurse, often invisible and unnoticed but always watching and taking notes. Ron was a trade union organizer and all-around rabble-rouser who still loves to protest and fight the power. Ibrahim is a retired psychiatrist who loves to analyze and figure out people.
The police are competent but still small-town cops. Detective Chief Inspector Chris Hudson, a chubby, lonely 50-year-old, and PC Donna DeFreitas, a 26-year-old newcomer to the Fairhaven PD, aren’t bumbling idiots, but they don’t have the same resources and freedoms Elizabeth and the rest of the club have, so the pensioners are able to provide information that the police need — in exchange for updates on the case, of course.
The plot and characterization are solid, well written, and quite enjoyable, but the dialogue is a bit choppy and the characters say each others’ names far too often. This is a minor quibble in an otherwise well-executed first novel, and the lovely emotional beats more than make up for it. Despite being set in a retirement village and featuring characters in need of constant medical care and in early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, it never slips into pathos. The reader feels for the characters but does not pity them.
Osman is a well-known British television quiz show host. This, his debut novel, had a 10-way auction for the publishing rights, won by Penguin Random House’s Viking imprint and released in September 2020. It sold over a million copies in the UK and was also a New York Times bestseller. It has been optioned by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment for a movie adaptation.
Overall, The Thursday Murder Club is cute, sweet, and satisfying but not demanding. There are no action sequences (these are pensioners, so they don’t do a lot of running or fighting) and no psychological thrills. The stakes are fairly low — I cared as much about the characters as the murders. The “whodunnit” took awhile to work out without being a labyrinthine mess. This is a quick, amusing read without raising the pulse.
Rating: Highly recommended new classic, and book two is already available and on this reader’s “to buy” list.