“The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman – Septuagenarian Crime Fighters

 

Short Summary

Richard Osman has taken a fair bit of time dabble in fiction as an author, and his first effort gave us The Thursday Murder Club, the first entry in A Thursday Murder Club Mystery series. It introduces us to four friends in their seventies living in a peaceful retirement village who regularly meet together to discuss unsolved crimes. When a local developer is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the four friends become embroiled in their very first live case.

Richard Osman Brings the Pensioners out of Retirement

For many, the prospect of retirement is one of the greatest rewards they could expect from society, a prize for having lived long enough to be granted the right of having nothing but free time. The ways to spend one's retirement would take several tomes to enumerate, but for Joyce, Elizabeth, Bernard and Ibrahim in Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club, there is only one answer: solving unsolved crimes.

The first book in A Thursday Murder Club Mystery Series begins by introducing us to the four main characters in rather brief fashion, all of them septuagenarians living in a peaceful village designed specifically for retirees. Their days are mostly calm and spent finding potential solutions to puzzles which have confounded the authorities, preparing them better than most for what awaits them.

One day, a local developer is found dead under rather mysterious circumstances, and the four friends seize their chance to tackle a live case instead of a cold one, to make an actual difference in the world around them, even if their days are more or less numbered. Naturally, the task proves a little more dangerous than what they're used to, especially when additional bodies start piling up.

The police are making themselves known and doing their best to bring law and order to their remote corner of the world, but the task proves a little more difficult than anticipated. Not only are the people in charge of the investigation a little less than experienced, but they're also unfamiliar with the area, and ultimately even they turn to the four members of the Thursday Murder Club for some guidance.

Each one of them has a particular set of experiences they've acquired over a lifetime (nursing, spying, psychiatric analysis and professional protesting), and combined with their proclivity for solving difficult crimes, the unlikely gang becomes the village's best hope for restoring peace and quiet, even if through unorthodox methods.

A Winding Labyrinth of Motives in The Thursday Murder Club

Like any good novel, The Thursday Murder Club does take a bit of time at the start to set the stage and put the events in motion, but as is characteristic for modern thrillers, the action begins before we've learned anything truly profound about our main characters. Their development and characterization happens over the course of the book, but more on that later. For now, I'd like to discuss the mystery itself.

Richard Osman does a respectable job at sinking the hooks in, so-to-speak, making full use of his secluded setting and the relatively small cast of suspects at his disposal. The intrigue of the initial murder feels impactful and leaves just enough of a clue to make us hungry for more. From there on out, the story becomes increasingly complex, and I feel like it's something one would benefit from knowing before heading into the story.

While the start does give the impression we're in for a small, straightforward and hermetically-sealed affair, the further the plot develops the more threads get added to it. The number of suspects feels like it keeps on growing from one chapter to the next, and I will admit there were a couple of moments when I had to take a moment to orient myself in the story.

Now, don't take what I'm saying as an indicator that this approach weakens the story. On the contrary, once I got used to it I came to appreciate the added layers of complexity I had to deal with in my own search for the ultimate answer. The chase after the killer is intriguing and largely intellectual, a natural extension of our protagonists, and trying to put the pieces together before they do is, in my opinion, one of the greatest pleasures afforded by the genre.

I do have a nagging suspicion not everyone will be completely on-board with all the final revelations and how things get wrapped up. Without spoiling anything I will say the author proved to be one-step ahead of me once the ultimate twist came along, and the climax certainly lived up to its designation, thrusting us into a sprawling web of interconnected facts and motives. I can only imagine how much time it took Richard Osman to weave it all together without any plot holes.

United in Old Age

As I mentioned it above, we aren't told all that much about our characters, with Richard Osman giving us just enough information to give us a feel for who they are and what they bring to the table. At first, I was afraid it meant they would remain simple vehicles to drive us through the story, but I'm glad to say my fears didn't turn out to be justified.

We learn more and more about our protagonists with virtually every interaction they have, every decision they make, and every conversation they have, both with each other and the rest of the world. All of them are still of sound mind and not averse to voicing their lines of thought and ambitions, giving us more than a few glimpses at their inner worlds.

In my opinion, each and every one of them felt unique and interesting in his or her own right, like real people with a lifetime's worth of stories and secrets behind them. Naturally, the author did leave quite a bit of room in their biographies to flesh them out in future novels, but I feel like what we get from The Thursday Murder Club is more than enough to give me the impression they exist and truly matter in their own world.

While I myself have yet to reach the same age as our protagonists, I did enjoy the fact that the author described them as sane and competent people who are still very much capable of making a difference in their little slice of reality. At the same time, he gives us a window into the various trials awaiting everyone crossing the threshold of old age, a sobering reminder of youth's fleeting nature.

There are also quite a few other characters in the novel, from the other people living alongside them in the village, the suspects, the victims, and law enforcement officials, but it felt to me like they were relegated to more of a background role. While I would have liked to see the police a little more competent and involved in the investigation, I can understand why the author chose to handle it this way, shining the spotlight on our gang of crime fighters.

The Final Verdict

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is an ambitious and successful beginning to a new series, introducing us to a lovable cast of crime-solving retirees and plunging us into a complex case with countless twists with nary a moment to warm up. If you enjoy whodunit murder mysteries and are interested in seeing how seventy-year-old sleuths can tackle modern crime, then I think you're going to enjoy all this novel has to offer.

---

Richard Osman Richard Osman is an English comedian, producer, television presenter, and most importantly, a novelist. His career as an author began in 2012 with the publication of The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World, and has recently continued with the release of The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice, both part of A Thursday Murder Club Mystery series.