The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is an amusingly implausible mystery that may be a little overrated, but not by much.
A group of friends in an English retirement village meet on Thursdays to discuss and work on unsolved murders. When a developer is killed in their community, they get the opportunity to test their mettle in a current case. It’s a motley little group led by a woman named Elizabeth Best with a somewhat enigmatic past. A newcomer named Joyce gets invited to the group and seems to have the right kind of enthusiasm for these shenanigans. Interestingly enough, some of the chapters are Joyce’s diary entries, and the sudden changes in perspectives sort of work here. A couple of police officers become entangled with this unorthodox group as well.
Anyway, another murder adds to the mayhem, and the Thursday Murder Club have the chance to add some adventure into their retirement.
Osman creates a pretty good, diverse group of characters here. He doesn’t give too much away about the past of the four protagonists and manages to keep them interesting. Elizabeth is the determined, practical leader of this group and seems to have some unexpectedly useful connections. I don’t remember if her past was ever fully explained, and I kind of like that for some reason.
Older characters being in the lead solving crimes is not really a new idea in crime fiction, but Osman brings enough creative plotting and character development to be a welcome addition to the trope.
It is one of those books with chapters of widely varied lengths, which kind of makes the story seem a little too choppy. The shifting perspectives also threaten some distraction from the story, but Joyce Meadowcroft’s meandering diary entries were pretty funny.
The solution was a bit of a surprise but too far out of left field to be disappointing. I am not a big fan of stories like this being related in the present tense, but I am getting used to it being more common in today’s literature.
Overall, Osman is a welcome addition to the world of recent crime fiction, and I will likely peruse the other books in this series. If I ever end up in a retirement community, hopefully there will be a Thursday Murder Club I can join.
Next up, I will be returning to an old favorite author who I have not read for some time. I will allow author Dean Koontz to introduce me to The Bad Weather Friend.
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