The Thursday Murder Club by
Richard Osman
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Worth making it clear at the start: I very much enjoyed this book. I chuckled quietly on a regular basis and laughed out loud on a number of occasions. But (and, as some of you will point out, I have a very big but) I got a bit grumpy with it as I got nearer the end. My problem is, I can't really explain what I didn't like without getting deep into spoiler territory. So, here's a few things I liked first and then I'l add a spoiler tagged section at the end. You have been warned!
It was funny. Very occasionally, I felt that Mr Osman had worked too hard at creating the humour, but mostly, he just laid something out and left you to find it. No "thurump-tish" to signpost the joke, and all the better for it. A couple of quotes will give you the flavour.
"Ventham sits at a trestle table at the front of the Residents' Lounge. He is teak-tanned, relaxed and has his sunglasses pushed up over his 1980s catalogue-model hair. He is wearing an expensive polo shirt, and a watch so large it might as well be a clock. He looks like he smells great, but you wouldn't really want to get close enough to find out for certain."
and
'Well, you know what Sherlock Holmes said, old son. If you don't know who did it, then… something or other.'
'Indeed, wise words,' says Ibrahim.
One review described the book as having "killer one-liners" but I think that sells the humour short.
At times though, the writing can be quite touching:
One by one, the lights of the village switch off. The only remaining illumination comes from behind the thick hospital blinds of Willows. The business of dying keeping different hours from the business of living.
I have not read many crime thrillers, so I don't know how common the approach in this book is, but I liked the way the suspects were eliminated as we went along. To me, that seems much more "real world" than the Poirot approach where all the suspects are brought together at the end and only then is the killer revealed.
I also enjoyed that there were many strong, smart women driving the plot forward.
A lot to like, therefore, and I'm more than happy to recommend it to others. But... here comes the spoilers. Proceed at your own risk...
Spoiler section below. Are you sure you want to keep scrolling?
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At first, I quite liked Elizabeth. Clever, resourceful and with a mysterious past. As the plot progressed though, I liked her less. Too sure of her own righteousness and just wrong at times. For example, not reporting the body in the grave to the police was wrong and then playing the "doddery old woman" card to avoid prosecution just made it worse. She challenged her best friend Penny and her husband John over a 50 year old murder but turned a blind eye to Bogdan's cold-blooded revenge killings. Again, wrong - especially since they had set her up as investigating cold-cases because she had a need to see justice being done even long after the crime had been committed.
My annoyance of Elizabeth's double standards was increased as it lead to John killing Penny and then John killing himself. This surely should have been a wake-up call to Elizabeth but no, she seems to approve of this as a perfectly sensible reaction to being identified as a murderer.
I was uneasy that at least two of the suicides (John and Bernard) in the book seemed to be accepted as normal and even admirable. Osmon had set up Ibrahim as a retired psychiatrist who loved helping people but clearly murderers are not worth helping. And Bernard committed suicide because of depression over his wife's death (slight over-simplification) and this seems to presented as understandable, sensible and perhaps even noble. Once more, where was Ibrahim when Bernard needed him? And Joyce, the nurse, who had a romantic interest in Bernard seemed to take the suicide surprisingly well too! I guess she agreed that it was the best thing for Bernard. She might have been convinced. I wasn't.
Final grumpiness takes me back to the Penny reveal at the end. No hint of her involvement with the body in the grave earlier in the book and therefore no hint that John could have a motive for murdering Ventham until the reveal at the end. This seems to me a bit of a cheat. And besides, what a rubbish motive - to cover up a 50 year old murder. Was there anything that would have connected the body back to Penny? Almost certainly not, so why draw attention to yourself by murdering Ventham. Bah!
Despite the spoiler-tastic grumpiness above, I want to finish how I started: I very much enjoyed this book.
View all my reviews
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