‘The Thursday Murder Club’, published in September 2020, is the debut novel from producer and television presenter Richard Osman. Set in Coopers Chase, a fictional luxury retirement village in Kent, the novel follows the adventures of a group of four pensioners; Elizabeth (a former intelligence officer, and the de facto leader of the group), Joyce (a former nurse, and the narrator of the story), Ron (a former trade unionist), and Ibrahim (a former psychiatrist). Together, the quartet form the Thursday Murder Club, wherein they get together and set about investigating unsolved murder cases. As Joyce eagerly explains, ‘It was Thursday because there was a two-hour slot free in the Jigsaw Room, between Art History and Conversational French.’ The unorthodox group soon find themselves with a live case a little closer to home to solve when Tony Curran, a shady developer who owns twenty-five per cent of Coopers Chase, is found bludgeoned to death in his kitchen. The plot soon thickens when his brash business partner, Ian Ventham, is given a fatal injection during an altercation with the residents over his attempted development of the local cemetery.
For anyone who is familiar with Osman’s television presence on ‘Pointless’ and ‘House of Games’, I felt that his wit and amiable personality were translated brilliantly to the page in this novel, particularly in the chapters where he is writing as Joyce; a character who could easily be dismissed as being a ‘twee’ when you first meet her, but who in fact has a razor sharp sense of humour and keenly observes everything going on around her. The novel is packed with entertaining observations and quips about modern life and popular culture that made me chuckle on a regular basis as I was following the story (I particularly loved Osman’s description of Coopers Chase as a place where ‘[…] the Waitrose delivery vans clink with wine and repeat prescriptions’ and Ibrahim’s rebuke that ‘This is not Strictly Come Poisoning, Ron’, when the two are rating the local residents as murder suspects). As a former Kentish resident, I also particularly enjoyed the playful references to some of the local towns (‘I once went to Whitstable, just for the day, but couldn’t really see what the fuss was all about. Once you’ve done the oysters, there’s no real shopping to speak of’).
The unorthodox characters who form the Thursday Murder Club are distinct and highly likeable; they all have a wealth of experience, with their own unique story to tell, and despite having very different personalities, they work brilliantly together as a team, and have a genuine love and respect for each other. Possibly one of my favourite scenes in the book is the one in which Ron and Ibrahim are sat up late together, rating suspects for the case; when the subject turns to finding happiness, and Ibrahim asks Ron how he finds peace, his answer is ‘It might be here in this chair, with my mate, drinking his whiskey, dark outside, with something to talk about.’
I enjoyed the way in which each member of the Thursday Murder Club takes on a different role within the group, with Elizabeth being the leader and, along with Joyce, the chief instigator (the two are described at one point at the Cagney and Lacey of the group by the exasperated local DCI, Chris Hudson), while Ron is the firebrand and orator of the group, and Ibrahim takes on the role of placater and mediator.
In terms of style, ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ has many of what might be considered to be the key tenets of the ‘cosy’ murder mystery novel; whilst there is violence, it takes place off the page, and the focus of the crime element of the novel is arguably more on puzzle solving than suspense. However, there are also some deeply poignant and reflective moments, notably involving the Thursday Murder Club’s original co-founder Penny, a former police officer who is now in the village nursing home, and Elizabeth’s husband Stephen; this is a novel about so much more than solving a murder.
With several threads left hanging at the end of the novel, and a sequel, ‘The Man who Died Twice’, published in 2021, I finished reading ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ with the sense that Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim have many stories left to tell.
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