REVIEW: The Thursday Murder Club
Mar. 24th, 2024 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Thursday Murder Club: Richard Osman. Penguin, my copy was published in 2021.
Yes, years after everyone else, I have read ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ (isn’t Osman starting a new book series? Ah well, I’ve read it before the movie is coming out. There is going to be one, isn’t there?) Basically, I’m glad I did! When I first heard of the book, I knew Osman was a smart and engaging broadcaster with a production background. From the first few chapters, I could see why this book has been such a bestseller – it has an interesting setting, likeable characters with a particular view of mortality, a matter that keeps cropping up when encountering murder, but a light touch. I’d also note that no sentence is allowed to get too unwieldy, and the chapters are all pretty short, so they number over 100. More pickily, I’d point out that some of those short sentences had question marks at the end when they were statements, and they weren’t always in the chapters written by a character or passages reflecting how other characters thought. Some of them were in the narrative!
The setting is Coopers Chase, a retirement community for people who can afford to buy food in from Waitrose, people who used to be senior police officers, psychiatrists, experts in their field. They have societies to keep them busy, and widowed former nurse Joyce Meadowcroft is our way into one of those, the Thursday Murder Club, established by force of nature Elizabeth and her pal Penny. It’s other members are ‘Red’ Ron Ritchie, and Ibrahim Arif, who is assiduous about keeping as fit and healthy as possible. They have been looking into cold cases that Penny, a former police officer, might have kept copies of from back in the day. Sadly, Penny is now in the Willows, an annex that’s more of a nursing home than the self-contained flats most of the residents live in, no longer talking, but perhaps able to hear and understand.
We also meet the owner of Coopers Chase, the odious Ian Ventham, who has plans to expand if he gets the last hold-out landowning farmer to sell his land to him. It that expansion means digging up the small graveyard of the nuns who lived in the convent that the site originally was, so be it. On the very day he drops a business associate, said associate, Tony Curran, is murdered at home. The police are called in, but the Thursday Murder Club is also on the case. For Joyce and Elizabeth, it’s all excitement. For Ron, it’s slightly more complicated, because his boxer son had quite a shady period in his life, which someone seems to want to bring back to light.
Among the cops are Donna De Freitas, who left London after a breakup and is now regretting the move. Having met the Club when she was meant to be giving a talk about security, she has something of their measure. Others are as deceived as characters were by retiree Poirot or little old ladies Misses Marple and Silver. When Elizabeth promises to get Donna on the murder squad if she’ll be their contact, she goes along with it. Said squad is led by DCI Chris Hudson, good at his job, a bit glummer about every other aspect of his life, who gets done over by what seem to be harmless old witnesses, but are soon proving to be assets, liabilities and equally determined to solve the murders. For soon enough, there are other dead bodies, and not from natural causes.
So, there are six main investigators, and it has to be said that the characters are a big part of the book’s attraction. The plot isn’t the main reason why I read murder mysteries so I don’t know whether readers for whom the plot reigns supreme found it enough of a puzzler, but the question of whether all the murders are linked, and if so how certainly kept me interested. A friend had told me, while I was complaining about finding a male author’s depiction of a female main character not wholly convincing, that Orman was good at writing women, and that’s true.
Joyce herself has started writing a diary, where we get the chatty voice of a woman of lower status than all these people with their impressive CVs, but the one who ‘gets things done’. She is observant, perhaps even better at reading people than Elizabeth, and her high-flying daughter Joanna didn’t come by her smarts just from her father. Joyce’s feelings about Joanna, the deceased Gerry, her growing friendship with the Club members and eye for the gentleman are slowly revealed, making her a rounded character.
Donna too, a black police officer in her twenties, knows what it is to be underestimated. The challenge and opportunities that this case provide her allow her to flourish, and gently bully her boss, Chris, into better life choices with a surprising and hopeful pay-off. Ron, the softie under the bluster, and Ibrahim, with his calling to help people, turn out to be more than they seem, as do so many of the other residents, who have lived long, complicated lives.
But most of all there’s Elizabeth, the driving force behind the Club, who used to be – we presume – in the secret service, with her connections and her wiles. She may not be at the cutting edge any more, but she’s usually a step ahead of most, including the police. As we learn more about her, particularly her loyalty to her fading best friend and worries about her husband, she too gains dimensions.
Osman makes great, sympathetic use of the characters’ ages. There are nods to physical frailties, but respect for the desire to ‘hold on to the good days’ and to make use of all the experience in different fields these characters have. Of course, the residents of Coopers Chase are a largely privileged class, but the presence of Willows, a reminder of the threat of dementia that so many of the characters feel, is a physical manifestation of the last waiting room that may face us. (On the other hand, death may come quickly, and as certain characters in this story experience it, violently.) That and the Garden of Eternal Rest, which is both plot point and significant location, add a metaphysical element to the book. But it is balanced by the joie de vivre of using your abilities to right wrongs, companionship (at times boozy companionship) and learning new things that the Club brings its members.
Another theme in the book is parents and children, Joyce’s relationship with Joanna improves after Elizabeth insists they go to Joanna for advice on financial questions. Ron’s care for Jason echoes this, Elizabeth sees in smart Bogdan the son she might have had, while there are other parent-child relationships that have a bearing on the plot. There is a different look at romance. Many of the characters are widowed and grieving, while the desire to protect the love of their (long) life leads some characters to real extremes.
Maybe there are too many deaths (well, suicides, if I’m being honest and probably giving too much away), and there are points where Osman is blatantly with-holding information that the characters have to allow the reader to surmise or guess wildly. Overall, however, this is an oddly humane murder mystery, written with humour and intelligence. It’s good to know that there will be further cases for the Thursday Murder Club, although he’s set a high bar for himself – will he able to be find equally compelling plots and ways to illuminate these characters even further?
Yes, years after everyone else, I have read ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ (isn’t Osman starting a new book series? Ah well, I’ve read it before the movie is coming out. There is going to be one, isn’t there?) Basically, I’m glad I did! When I first heard of the book, I knew Osman was a smart and engaging broadcaster with a production background. From the first few chapters, I could see why this book has been such a bestseller – it has an interesting setting, likeable characters with a particular view of mortality, a matter that keeps cropping up when encountering murder, but a light touch. I’d also note that no sentence is allowed to get too unwieldy, and the chapters are all pretty short, so they number over 100. More pickily, I’d point out that some of those short sentences had question marks at the end when they were statements, and they weren’t always in the chapters written by a character or passages reflecting how other characters thought. Some of them were in the narrative!
The setting is Coopers Chase, a retirement community for people who can afford to buy food in from Waitrose, people who used to be senior police officers, psychiatrists, experts in their field. They have societies to keep them busy, and widowed former nurse Joyce Meadowcroft is our way into one of those, the Thursday Murder Club, established by force of nature Elizabeth and her pal Penny. It’s other members are ‘Red’ Ron Ritchie, and Ibrahim Arif, who is assiduous about keeping as fit and healthy as possible. They have been looking into cold cases that Penny, a former police officer, might have kept copies of from back in the day. Sadly, Penny is now in the Willows, an annex that’s more of a nursing home than the self-contained flats most of the residents live in, no longer talking, but perhaps able to hear and understand.
We also meet the owner of Coopers Chase, the odious Ian Ventham, who has plans to expand if he gets the last hold-out landowning farmer to sell his land to him. It that expansion means digging up the small graveyard of the nuns who lived in the convent that the site originally was, so be it. On the very day he drops a business associate, said associate, Tony Curran, is murdered at home. The police are called in, but the Thursday Murder Club is also on the case. For Joyce and Elizabeth, it’s all excitement. For Ron, it’s slightly more complicated, because his boxer son had quite a shady period in his life, which someone seems to want to bring back to light.
Among the cops are Donna De Freitas, who left London after a breakup and is now regretting the move. Having met the Club when she was meant to be giving a talk about security, she has something of their measure. Others are as deceived as characters were by retiree Poirot or little old ladies Misses Marple and Silver. When Elizabeth promises to get Donna on the murder squad if she’ll be their contact, she goes along with it. Said squad is led by DCI Chris Hudson, good at his job, a bit glummer about every other aspect of his life, who gets done over by what seem to be harmless old witnesses, but are soon proving to be assets, liabilities and equally determined to solve the murders. For soon enough, there are other dead bodies, and not from natural causes.
So, there are six main investigators, and it has to be said that the characters are a big part of the book’s attraction. The plot isn’t the main reason why I read murder mysteries so I don’t know whether readers for whom the plot reigns supreme found it enough of a puzzler, but the question of whether all the murders are linked, and if so how certainly kept me interested. A friend had told me, while I was complaining about finding a male author’s depiction of a female main character not wholly convincing, that Orman was good at writing women, and that’s true.
Joyce herself has started writing a diary, where we get the chatty voice of a woman of lower status than all these people with their impressive CVs, but the one who ‘gets things done’. She is observant, perhaps even better at reading people than Elizabeth, and her high-flying daughter Joanna didn’t come by her smarts just from her father. Joyce’s feelings about Joanna, the deceased Gerry, her growing friendship with the Club members and eye for the gentleman are slowly revealed, making her a rounded character.
Donna too, a black police officer in her twenties, knows what it is to be underestimated. The challenge and opportunities that this case provide her allow her to flourish, and gently bully her boss, Chris, into better life choices with a surprising and hopeful pay-off. Ron, the softie under the bluster, and Ibrahim, with his calling to help people, turn out to be more than they seem, as do so many of the other residents, who have lived long, complicated lives.
But most of all there’s Elizabeth, the driving force behind the Club, who used to be – we presume – in the secret service, with her connections and her wiles. She may not be at the cutting edge any more, but she’s usually a step ahead of most, including the police. As we learn more about her, particularly her loyalty to her fading best friend and worries about her husband, she too gains dimensions.
Osman makes great, sympathetic use of the characters’ ages. There are nods to physical frailties, but respect for the desire to ‘hold on to the good days’ and to make use of all the experience in different fields these characters have. Of course, the residents of Coopers Chase are a largely privileged class, but the presence of Willows, a reminder of the threat of dementia that so many of the characters feel, is a physical manifestation of the last waiting room that may face us. (On the other hand, death may come quickly, and as certain characters in this story experience it, violently.) That and the Garden of Eternal Rest, which is both plot point and significant location, add a metaphysical element to the book. But it is balanced by the joie de vivre of using your abilities to right wrongs, companionship (at times boozy companionship) and learning new things that the Club brings its members.
Another theme in the book is parents and children, Joyce’s relationship with Joanna improves after Elizabeth insists they go to Joanna for advice on financial questions. Ron’s care for Jason echoes this, Elizabeth sees in smart Bogdan the son she might have had, while there are other parent-child relationships that have a bearing on the plot. There is a different look at romance. Many of the characters are widowed and grieving, while the desire to protect the love of their (long) life leads some characters to real extremes.
Maybe there are too many deaths (well, suicides, if I’m being honest and probably giving too much away), and there are points where Osman is blatantly with-holding information that the characters have to allow the reader to surmise or guess wildly. Overall, however, this is an oddly humane murder mystery, written with humour and intelligence. It’s good to know that there will be further cases for the Thursday Murder Club, although he’s set a high bar for himself – will he able to be find equally compelling plots and ways to illuminate these characters even further?
