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Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman


 

Book: The Thursday Murder Club

Author: Richard Osman 

Pages: 382

Read on: Kindle 

Read in: ~4 hours 

Plot Summary: In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?


Things I Liked:


1. A story about four senior citizen detectives sounded so good! A lot of times, people tend to dismiss senior citizens without taking into account the rich experiences that they've lived through and how they can still help/ guide us in so many ways! I loved that the very people, who are underestimated by society, decided to get involved and solve a murder that happened at their doorstep! 


2. All the characters in the book are nicely developed and we get to see both their brilliance and their vulnerability. 

Elizabeth is the leader of the pack. She is someone, who, clearly, was with the MI6 or something like that, given she has been all over the world and has contacts in the strangest places! 

Joyce is the chronicler of the group, an ex-nurse, she is a little too excited about solving a murder and feels that all her crime show dreams are going to come through! 

Ron is an ex-union leader. He was the bane of big companies trying to shut down their operations in the UK and now he takes his role as the defender of the defenceless pretty seriously at their retirement village! 

Ibrahim, a psychiatrist, keeps his mind sharp by going through his old cases and living in the fear of losing his own mind. They decided to start the Thursday Murder Club to go over cold police cases that one of their founding members, Penny- an ex-cop, shared with them.  


3. The crime solving process is interesting and, often, hilarious! I liked how the different threads of the case are untangled by the Thursday Murder Club and how they use their different skills, contacts and resourcefulness to get to the bottom of the crimes and find the killer. 


4. The book is really well written and fast-paced. I wanted to read all of it quickly yet savour it at the same time! 


5. The setting of the book- in a "luxury" retirement village- is quite unique as far as the thriller/ murder mystery genre goes! It is a unique environment in the sense that everyone who lives there has a past and secrets and so, it lends itself to much intrigue and future cases as well! 

The lives of these senior citizens in the retirement village are still quite interesting and full of drama and I, for one, am most excited for the second book in the series! 


Rating: 4.5/5 


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