The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

 “In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly…to discuss unsolved crimes.” 

This was a delightfully different mystery about a band of senior citizens that take it upon themselves to solve a murder (or a few actually). Armed with a variety of skills born from their previous professions and extensive life experience, they forge an unlikely crime fighting team. 

This mystery was not the usually Scandinavian noir that I have come to prefer, but I had heard so much about this book and was intrigued by the author’s choice to use retirees as lead characters, that I felt I had to pick this one up. I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters were quite comical - particularly a scene in which the Thursday Murder Club, as they call themselves, entrap a local police detective into becoming their reluctant champion by using his English politeness against him. 

There are other, more sobering moments as well, when the Club members face life’s very real lessons in mortality.  Because of the very real challenges both to themselves and to those around them due to age and related infirmary, it is entirely believable that they have nothing to fear from criminals as compared to what they face in their daily lives.  

The crimes and back stories of the characters are layered and intriguing, and not at all watered down. I was pleasantly surprised by how each character, whether a hero or villain, has their faults and assets exposed. There is so much grey area packed into characters that traditionally would have been the bad guys or the good guys.  

I do not know if I plan on diving into the whole series yet, but this was good fun, a great read and I do highly recommend it.



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