Monday, October 11, 2021

The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
Pamela Dorman Books, 2020. 355 pages. Mystery

In a peaceful retirement village in England, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

The Thursday Murder Club is a great book for those who like clean/cozy mysteries that have a sense of humor, but they’re not so overly silly that you’re rolling your eyes the entire time. Told from multiple perspectives, readers will love each character, even the murder suspects.

Osman does a great job with the plot of the murder, which kept me truly guessing. He plants subtle clues and plotlines throughout the book in such a way that you forget about some of them, or write others off, then in the end everything is wrapped up in a satisfying bow. The result is that even while you’re having a great time reading about life in an energetic retirement community, you’re also reading a very satisfying mystery novel. I can’t wait to read Osman’s next book in the series.

If you like The Thursday Murder Club you might also like:

by Ellie Griffiths
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020, 315 pages. Mystery

The death of a ninety-year-old woman with a heart condition should not be suspicious. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing out of the ordinary when Peggy's caretaker, Natalka, begins to recount Peggy Smith's passing. But Natalka had a reason to be at the police station: while clearing out Peggy's flat, she noticed an unusual number of crime novels, all dedicated to Peggy. And each psychological thriller included a mysterious postscript: PS: for PS. When a gunman breaks into the flat to steal a book and its author is found dead shortly thereafter, Detective Kaur begins to think that perhaps there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all.

by Christopher Fowler
Bantam Books, 2004, 356 pages. Mystery

Edgy, suspenseful, and darkly comic, Full Dark House stars two cranky but brilliant old detectives whose lifelong friendship was forged solving crimes for the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In Full Dark House, Christopher Fowler tells the story of both their first and last case--and how along the way the unlikely pair of crime fighters changed the face of detection.

by Lynne Truss
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018, 290 pages. Mystery

Dubbed “the funniest crime novel of 2018,” It’s 1957 in the sleepy British seaside town of Brighton. But Constable Twitten, a new, eager young constable, is certain that the patterns he’s seeing in the small burglaries he’s assigned to investigate suggests that not all is well. When renowned theater critic A.S. Crystal arrives in Brighton and is shot dead while watching a new play, Constable Twitten finds connections to a decade-old mystery that has yet to be solved.

MB

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