The Thursday Murder Club Book Review!

Posted On February 9, 2021

Hi Readers! It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Most of my time from Monday to Friday goes either in working or sleeping. And, on weekends, I am doing this thing where I read an entire book start to finish & then again comes the week & so on. This is why, while I am getting 2 days to read, I am not getting any time to write book reviews. It’s just jumping from one book to the next. And to be honest, I cannot go back and write the review for a book I read before 2 books!

Hush. I just wanted to vent all of that. Well, today is a Monday & I am writing this review at 11:50 PM when I usually relax with reruns of Modern Family. So, my list of writing book reviews piled up to a total of 3, which is why it was high time to start somewhere, so here I am, with the book review of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman!

 

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~

Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves

A female cop with her first big case

A brutal murder

Welcome to…

The Thursday Murder Club

 

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

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?

 

~~CHARACTERS~~

This novel is full of characters, in the sense that it has a lot of characters but also in the sense that they are real characters. Our Thursday Murder Club includes Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim & Ron. Each of them has their unique traits. While Elizabeth is a fierce lady who gets things done bypassing the right way, Joyce is someone who gets things done in her own way by baking lemon meringues. Ibrahim was a psychiatrist and it shows, while Ron is probably the most no-nonsense guy.

We also have another set of people solving the crime, officially, the police officers. There’s PC Donna De Freitas, who really grew on me. She started off as mousy but became her own person bossing around her own boss in the later pages. Her boss DCI Chris Hudson is shown as a single slog of a human with just that extra weight & extra clumsiness & extra mess in his life.

We have few more characters in the retirement village of Coopers Chase. The owner & developer of the place is Ian Ventham, whose portrayal is spot on. He is greedy, power & money-hungry & will not stop at anything to get a little more. There are two contractors Tony Curran & Bogdan, both of whom polar opposites. We also have a few recurring characters, like the priest, Joyce’s daughter Joanna, Joyce’s love interest, Elizabeth’s husband Stephen, original co-founder of the Club Paige & just so many other retirees of the village.

Because there are so many characters, it is impossible to guess the murderer. Also, the characters are well-positioned so as to not confuse the reader by throwing 15 names in the span of a page. I loved reading the story mainly because of all the multitude of characters.

~~OVERALL THOUGHTS~~

~~CHARACTERS – MORE THE MERRIER~~

As if I hadn’t mentioned it before, I simply loved the characters in this novel. They are quirky, individualistic, fun & so out of the box for elders. Very few novels can put in these many characters and not make it confusing for the readers. The amazing part is that there are different kinds of people in different groups, all having different sets of attributes, which gels up the story really well.

 

~~WRITING STYLE~~

The novel is divided in two parts; one is where the current story is being told & the other is also the current story but from Joyce’s point of view where she writes in her diary. It’s really interesting to read both the aspects of writing. The first part kept the mystery & thrill alive in the most fun way & Joyce’s diary was just so incredibly human that it was reflective to read that. The little things that old people did like not knowing the slang millennials use these days & use their innocence as a tactic to get what they wanted. Because of such relatable & potentially relatable story lines, it was all the more engaging to read.

 

~~UNPREDICTABILITY~~

In mystery & thriller novels, I always determine how good it is based on if I am able to predict things, such as the murderer or other obvious plot lines. In this novel, I wasn’t able to do that & I am pretty sure no one can. There is just so much going on that there’s no telling who is the murderer. And the more fun part is that you don’t even sweat over guessing about the murderer because you are just enjoying reading it that much. So, while I loved the unpredictability of the story as a whole, I also loved the unpredictability of some individual min-stories within the novel.

 

~~GENRE~~

Reading this book reminded me of Fredrik Backman’s ‘Anxious People’. It was a thriller but with a lot of fun in it & also some life lessons along the way. I think this is more of a modern concept to write a fun thriller removing all the seriousness & goriness from it. As much as I love the traditional crime drama, I am also completely loving this fun version of thrillers.

I think to play this way with the genre, it takes real talent on the author’s part. It is no wonder that Richard Osman & Fredrik Backman were able to pull it off. While I haven’t really seen Richard Osman as a TV show host or such, I have heard about his brilliance, wit & humour through words.

 To sum it up, I loved this book. It was a casual & fun read on an otherwise boring week. It definitely lifted my mood & spirits while reading the book & also a few days after. If you are looking for a light read, you should definitely pick The Thursday Murder Club. I have rated it at 4/5 stars on Goodreads!

 

Until next time,