One of my few reviews where I don’t think I give anything away?
What if the Golden Girls tried to solve a murder? And the Golden Girls were British? This is the strongest possible compliment I can give to the following book because I love the Golden Girls and I love British people. That’s my way of summarizing Richard Osman’s 2020 book, The Thursday Murder Club, a lovely, endearing, entertaining, laugh-out-loud funny, and beautiful meditation on growing older, community, and yes, the “fun” of solving a murder. In that latter sense, Osman’s book, which came before Only Murders in the Building, reminded me of the Hulu show: funny, but also touching on deep points about what it means to be human, and the ache and beauty of growing older and growing older with someone else.
Four friends live at Coopers Chase retirement village, and have taken to being part of the Thursday Murder Club, held in the Jigsaw Room (better solving crimes than knitting and nattering!): Ron, a rebel-rouser from back in the day, who also now has a famous boxer son; Ibrahim, a retired psychiatrist, who loves calculating and mapping things out with a dry sensibility (it’s hilarious); Joyce, a former nurse with an active libido (and intersperses the novel with her funny, observant diary entries); and their ringleader, as it were, Elizabeth, who I believe has a past as a spy or something leading to varied connections that prove fruitful throughout the plot. Elizabeth is friends with Penny, who is slowly dying from dementia, but was a police detective in her day. They use her old files of unsolved murders to get the Thursday Murder Club up and rolling. Joyce replaces Penny in the Club once she’s too far gone to continue.
All four of them, along with the charming detectives, Chris and Donna (short for Madonna, much to her chagrin), who are coaxed into cooperating with the Club by Elizabeth, naturally, are such well-defined characters, with their own motivations, own personalities and talents, and when brought together, make for some of the wittiest, fun, hilarious, and biting dialogue in the book. I couldn’t get enough of how fast the dialogue would move when they were playing off of each other and at the expense, as it were, of Chris and Donna (so that they could stay involved in the investigation). These people may be in a retirement village, but they certainly aren’t dead yet, sitting in front of a television all day. They are lively! And it’s beautiful that Osman made them the cast of his story. Elizabeth’s prowess and unapologetically forceful nature makes her an instant classic protagonist in my book. Add in a quite well-threaded and orchestrated plot, with a few red herrings, and ultimately, more meditations on loss, love, grief, and dealing with dying and death, especially of our loved ones, and Osman’s book had everything I need in a crime story.
Like a great Agatha Christie novel, or for a more modern example, this book reminded me a lot of Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, also from 2020, Osman’s kept me guessing, enthralled, and everything wrapped up with logic and care to detail. I love a book that can make me think, laugh, and most importantly, feel in equal measure. I wanted to be friends with everyone in the Thursday Murder Club, and even the coppers. But I also felt deeply for them as they experienced getting older and trying to stave off the dying of the light in themselves and others. Even Chris, who isn’t anywhere near ready for the retirement home, straddled being alone with being lonely.
Clever and elegant in its machinations, I can’t wait to read more books involving the Thursday Murder Club, and I can’t recommend this debut of the team enough. It’ll be a strong contender for my favorite read of 2024 surely.
Milam's Musings 