‘Such a beacon of pleasure’ KATE ATKINSON’So smart and funny. Deplorably good’ IAN RANKIN’A gripping read’ SUNDAY TIMESTHE FIRST BOOK IN THE #1 BESTSELLING THURSDAY MURDER CLUB SERIES BY TV PRESENTER RICHARD OSMANIn a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday … Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?__________________________________WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB’Thrilling, moving, laugh-out-loud funny’ MARK BILLINGHAM’A great read, I really enjoyed it’ GRAHAM NORTON’As the bodies pile up, and more is revealed of the lives and loves of Joyce, Ibrahim, Ron and Elizabeth, you can’t help cheering them on – and hoping to meet them again soon’ THE TIMES, CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH’Mystery fans are going to be enthralled’ HARLAN COBEN’Pure escapism’ THE GUARDIAN, BEST CRIME AND THRILLERS OF 2020’One of the most enjoyable books of the year’ DAILY EXPRESS’Smart, compassionate, warm, moving and so VERY funny’ MARIAN KEYES’As gripping as it is funny’ EVENING STANDARD’Funny, clever and achingly British’ ADAM KAY’An exciting new talent in crime fiction’ DAILY MAIL’A warm, wise and witty warning never to underestimate the elderly’ VAL MCDERMID’Delight after delight from first page to last’ RED MAGAZINE’I completely fell in love with it’ SHARI LAPENA’This is properly brilliant. The pages fly and I can’t stop smiling’ STEVE CAVANAGH’Charming, clever debut’ STYLIST’I laughed my arse off’ BELINDA BAUER’A witty and poignant tale’ DAILY TELEGRAPH’Clever, clever plot’ FIONA BARTON’An absolutely delightful read’ PRIMA MAGAZINE’Utterly charming’ SARAH PINBOROUGH’Funny and original’ THE SUN’Properly funny and totally charming… steeped in Agatha Christie joy’ ARAMINTA HALL’This is one of the most delightful novels of the year’ DAILY MIRROR’A bundle of joy’ JANE FALLON
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This was such a fun book – and with a positive view of the elderly Four septuagenarians living in a peaceful retirement community come together every week to discuss “cold” murder cases. But then a murder in the community pulls them out into the hunt for the killer. The unfolding mystery takes many surprising turns and the wonderful characters and their relationships captured my heart.
This is the second crime novel I’ve read recently with a female protagonist in her 70s, the other being Before She Was Helen. I enjoyed both novels and felt they both gave me new insight into people.
The Thursday Murder Club goes into the POV’s of several seniors who are crime sleuths, and they’re all strong characters, flawed but lovable. We also go into the bad guys’ POV. But the multiple POV’s never feel chaotic or confusing, because the characters are so well delineated and the transitions are so smooth. Without giving any spoilers, when one character commit an unfortunate act due to their feelings of depression, it’s very emotionally affecting.
The plot isn’t perhaps the strongest plot ever, but the entertaining wry humor and very rootable characters more than made up for that, for me.
Overrated rubbish. Very disappointing.
Great mystery book with an entertaining cast of characters and a great plot. The senior citizens in this story are smart and resourceful, and the pace of the novel is impeccable. Highly recommended.
Wonderful characters who demonstrate that age is no barrier (unless you’re digging up a grave).
Quirky, fun, emotional, with plenty of red herrings along the way, but nothing stands in the way of Elizabeth and her fellow Thursday Murder Club colleagues.
Highly recommended.
Every now and then you come across a book that stands mountains above the rest. The Thursday Murder Club is one of those books. I’d give anything to join Elizabeth and Joyce and the fella’s every Thursday. I didn’t want the book to end, and I can only hope there is another book in this series. A great adventure, a superb mystery, and characters that will make you laugh out loud. I know I did. Fabulous read – don’t miss it!
Beautiful prose that ranges from hilarious to poignant.
THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB consists of four friends in a luxury retirement complex in Kent, who meet weekly to exercise their brains. Their murder investigations go “live” when the builder of the complex is found murdered in his home. Beside his body is a photograph of three men: the murder victim, an unknown man, and Jason (who is the son of Ron, one of the four club members), sitting at a pub table drinking beer and smiling over a large pile of cash. Jason, we learn, is a retired boxer who once dabbled in drugs. Perhaps he still does. Nobody is certain this early in the game. But Elizabeth, who lives with her husband Steve, who has dementia, is on the mystery. She has a mysterious pass and knows about guns. Before you can say “Bob’s uncle,” she and Joyce have wormed their way into the local constabulary in search of answers–not to mention a way to become involved in the case! There are many lemon glazes and glasses of sherry, and another murder or two in the murder club’s corner of Kent. Richard Osman weaves a wonderful tale that is once comedic and tender and filled with marvelous, MARVELOUS characters! Osman believes that the elderly are “just people”. They aren’t any different than young people, only some parts move a little more slowly. And this reminds me of Alan Bradley’s Flavia DeLuce. While Flavia is a child, she is first and foremost a person who does what she does because of who she is. Osman’s characters live with loss and the richness of age. They are fully and beautifully drawn, and happily we will be seeing them again as Osman, a well-known British television personality, has another book coming out later this year. And Steven Spielberg has acquired film rights to the book. This is a great debut novel filled with hours of enjoyment and promise. Don’t miss it!
Twisty, twisty, twisty. Enough plots for 3 books!
A fun, twisty mystery with a solid cast of old folks, determined to solve one murder (and a subsequent homicide) if for no other reason than to keep busy. The author pulls off a couple quick turns with aplomb. One hopes a sequel is on its way!
The members of The Thursday Murder Club study cold cases for their own diversion—until there’s a murder in their midst. This is a well-written, smart, and entertaining read full of interesting characters, long-held secrets, and twists.
What a good book! At first I wasn’t sure I liked it. It was very funny but I had a hard time settling in to the pace. There were a lot of characters to get to know and I liked each of them so much that the time spent felt too brief. Ultimately, I really enjoyed everything about this book. My only complaint is that I couldn’t follow all the twists at the end. There were so many I couldn’t follow where things were. I liked the book a great deal and look forward to the next in the series.
Welcome to Coopers Chase Retirement Village. It’s a community for active seniors in England. There are all kinds of activities happening on a regular basis, but the most unusual, and smallest, is a group of four friends who meet every Thursday to discuss cold criminal cases. Then one day, the murder of a developer takes place near the community. Naturally, these four friends jump at the chance to figure out what is really going on. Will they be able to solve the case?
I kept hearing about this book, so I had to give it a try. The premise is certainly right up my alley, and there was much I enjoyed about it. The characters are charming, and there were plenty of twists to the mystery. In fact, I feel like we could have done without a twist or two. Yes, everything makes sense at the end, but there are so many twists at the end, it is a little overwhelming. The book is funny, although at times it feels like it is trying too hard to be charming and funny. The police let the lead characters get away with a little too much, although I usually ignore that in the books I read, so this is worth noting in passing. I did struggle a bit with the justice done at the end of this book. The story is told in present tense from multiple points of view, but we always follow which character is our focus. This is one of those books with some obvious flaws, but I still enjoyed it overall. If you are interested in it, I definitely recommend you pick it up. I’ll be visiting the characters again for the sequel.
An extremely well written, entertaining book. Well done!
A very enjoyable read, unexpected twists and very well written.
What do you get when you put several elderly people together in a community and throw in a murder or two? The Thursday Murder Club! This is a very complex story detailing the personalities of these elderly friends, their clever sleuthing, the police they inform, and the crimes committed by unlikely culprits.
There are a lot of characters in this book, so you may want to have a pen and paper handy to keep track of everyone. The story wraps up nicely, with the stories intertwining.
I think this would make a nice beginning to a series.
A traditional mystery packed with sustained humor and delightful characters.
This book is an absolute delight to read. It’s clever and understated, with characters that you quickly come to care about although there is far, far more depth to each one of them than appears on the surface. But it’s not just a cosy murder – this novel has a dark edge of sadness to it which made me cry buckets at the end. This is a story all tied up in the luxurious Coopers Chase Retirement Village where Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim meet on a Thursday to look at unsolved cases, but when an actual murder happens, they jump in to investigate. Then the body count rises and there are plenty more mysteries and secrets to uncover.
I love how the group manage to shoehorn PC Donna De Freitas into the investigation. Donna doesn’t stand for any nonsense with the four, but she grows fond of Elizabeth, the Godfather of the gang, who is such a force to be reckoned with. The emerging friendship between Donna and Chris is also great to watch evolve.
There is so much gentle humour to be found between the lines; Joyce (whose lemon drizzle cakes are laced with vodka) is very proud of the fact she is the only one who can work the SkyPlus, and there is confusion over what a talk on tablets actually entails. The word play and subtleties of language are clever and just keep coming. There is plenty of visual humour too – you can picture DCI Chris Hudson trying to drink his tea whilst hemmed in on the sofa and the hilarious road trip to test out the timings of one of the murders is stymied by the need to stop off in a layby for a comfort break. But along with the funny, almost in the same sentence, there is the tinge of sadness rippling just under the surface; the significance of G&T in a can, the cold dread of memory loss, initially laughed off. It is a story which makes you stop and think about the longevity of love and what it means to share a lifetime with someone when the end is just around the corner. Osman also explores the relationships between parents and their grown-up children and how age doesn’t change how you feel inside. There are some very poignant moments, so keep the tissues handy.
By the end of the novel the pace accelerates with potential suspects on every page and the prose continues to flow with plenty of little asides, some of which are crucial to unravelling the mysteries. In a book where the timing of Escape to the Country plays a crucial role – what’s not to love?
Set in a retirement village, his book is told from the perspectives of several different characters. By turns breezy, wistful, sober, and witty, the narrative is as much about the various ways people come to terms with their own pasts as it is the solving of a 50-year-old original murder, which leads to a few more in the present day. (The graveyard at the top of the nearby hill is full of bodies, many of whom have stories that the book excavates.) I enjoyed the book, which was at times amusingly entertaining and other times heartfelt and even poignant, as these characters (most over age 75, I believe) remember the losses of spouses and friends and children. This book shows characters facing their own mortality, yet pushing it off with actions that demonstrate that they are still able to shape their world, fight against injustice, and face ugly truths. One of the more eloquent passages is this, in which one man describes his feeling after his wife died: “… like someone reached in and took out my heart and lungs, and told me to keep living. Keep waking up, keep eating, keep putting one foot in front of the other. For what? … I realize that I have run out of whatever it is that we need to carry on.” Another character comments: “Whatever they say about time healing some things in life just break and can never be fixed.” Yet there are happy moments, too, in which people connect with others, and give and receive small acts of kindness and empathy. For me, this was an easy, engaging read on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
It took me a little while to associate with the characters but in the end, I loved the whole thing! Nice easy read with musings to make you smile. Good book.