Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman

I saw this book reviewed in the excellent Between the Covers on the BBC. The author, Richard Osman, is famous for his appearances on Pointless and other TV panel shows, so I was interested to read his new novel. This is set in a retirement village, where there are many different pursuits for the residents to enjoy – with one invite-only group dedicated to solving old murder cases. The book is partly written in the third person, with the rest narrated by Joyce, a retired nurse and recently joined member of the murder club.

The book suffers from the malaise of most modern tales of murder, which is that one is never enough. The first murder, is of Tony Curran, the main builder of the retirement village. His murder gives the club the chance to investigate a live case for once, about which they are thrilled. With no shortage of suspects, they have plenty to do – and in order to keep up to date with the case, they befriend PC De Freitas, who is working on the case. One of the suspects is Ian Ventham, the loathsome owner of the retirement village, who stands to gain significantly from the death of Curran. However, with so many enemies, it’s not long before Ventham, too, has an untimely death.

I lost count of the other deaths in the book – I believe there were at least 7 altogether. Some of these were long before the timeframe of this book, given that the main protagonists are in their seventies and eighties. In my opinion, the characters of those living in the retirement home, the police detectives and those involved in running the home were strong enough to have carried a single murder story. As it was, it felt that other characters had been introduced, along with unlikely motives and associated murders, just to complicate the book and add some padding.