The Thursday Murder Club: The first novel in the multi-million copy bestselling murder mystery series

Richard Osman

Sep 2020 · The Thursday Murder Club Book 1 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE RECORD-BREAKING, MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING THURSDAY MURDER CLUB SERIES.

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'Smart, compassionate, warm, moving and so VERY funny' Marian Keyes
'So smart and funny. Deplorably good' Ian Rankin
'Thrilling, moving, laugh-out-loud funny' Mark Billingham

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?

The Times Crime Book of the Month
Guardian Best Crime and Thrillers

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'A warm, wise and witty warning never to underestimate the elderly' Val McDermid

'I completely fell in love with it' Shari Lapena

'This is properly brilliant. The pages fly and I can't stop smiling' Steve Cavanagh

'Steeped in Agatha Christie joy' Araminta Hall

'Pure escapism' Guardian

'As gripping as it is funny' Evening Standard

'An exciting new talent in crime fiction' Daily Mail

'A witty and poignant tale' Daily Telegraph

'Funny and original' Sun


Richard Osman, Sunday Times bestseller, March 2024
The Bullet that Missed broke the record for the fastest-selling adult fiction hardback ever, September 2022

Ratings and reviews

I like Richard a lot but I don't get the hype about this book. I am a big fan of crime novels but with this one, I had to force myself to read through the first chapters on many occasions and every time I lose interest quickly and put it aside. I didn't find the narrative, the characters or the plot to be that engaging. I will give the second book a chance and hope it will change my mind about the series.

Picture the scene, an expensive retirement village in Kent (think pilates, Zumba, a gym, a swimming pool and cafe), called Cooper's Chase Retirement Village, built on the site of a former convent and four retirees meet every Thursday to try to solve old murder cases. Then the retirement village's shady owner Ian Ventham decides he wants to expand by digging up the nun's graveyard and cutting out his builder and minority partner Tony Curran, the retirees are up in arms and Tony Curran is found bludgeoned to death in his own home. Soon there is an embarrassment of murders, old and new, for the club to solve, working alongside local detective DCI Chris Hudson and PC Donna de Freitas. There are red herrings galore and it is all set in my corner of the world (I don't know why it gives me a thrill when characters are on a train that stops in my home town of Orpington, but it does). Think Miss Marple but with an iPad and brought right up to date with modern concerns. It had a plethora of engaging characters, all with interesting backstories. I had two niggles with this book. First, Richard Osman writes in the present tense a lot and it can be difficult to determine whether one of the characters is speaking/writing or whether the author is speaking directly to the reader, then he mixes his tenses, like this: Ron had come to her with the photograph that Karen Playfair had seen. Karen would have been young at the time, but she was sure. Elizabeth had tried to piece it all together in her head. It seemed impossible at first. But the more she thought about it, it began to seem horribly true. She worked out the steps, one by one. Ibrahim had come back an hour ago, with the final piece of the jigsaw, so now is the time. The case is solved and only justice remains. I could follow it but the changing tenses pulled me out of the story to be honest. My second niggle may merely be a formatting issue with my ARC, scenes changed and the character changed within the same paragraph with no warning. One minute Elizabeth and Ron were talking in the Jigsaw Room and the next sentence features Chris and Donna watching TV and can take a sentence or two before you realise the change. Now, as I say this could be formatting of my ARC, I seemed to lose the chapter numbers partway through the book so it could be that the final version doesn't have this issue. Overall, loved this quirky gang of octogenarian sleuths, able to find out what the police cannot (just like Miss Marple) and would love to read another one. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Too long and confusing. Too many characters and names, facts, dates clichés... average writing. Only got to the end because I hate not finishing a book...

About the author

Richard Osman is an author, producer and television presenter. His first four novels, The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and The Bullet That Missed were multi-million-copy record-breaking bestsellers around the world. We Solve Murders is the first book in a new series featuring a family detective duo. He lives in London with his wife, Ingrid, and their cat Liesl.