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Book Review of The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, Bk 1)

The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, Bk 1)
maura853 avatar reviewed on + 542 more book reviews


I have been persuaded to give this another chance, and ... I really enjoyed it.

Boy, I must have been cranky, a year or so ago, when I announced, imperiously that I did not care who killed Tony Curran.

And, in a way, I think Richard Osman would have been proud of me, because I think the least important thing about this book is the identity of the murderer of Tony Curran. That's NOT a spoiler: there is a good, respectable solution to the murder(s) that an attentive reader could figure out, piecing the clues together. But far more important is a gentle, humorous consideration of the process of getting older: what it is about us that changes, what stays the same. How our social circle adapts to our change circumstances and, a bit like our schooldays, we find ourselves making friends outside our former comfort zone. If we're lucky, accepting the person we really are, after all those years of denying him or her.

Osman is a warm and witty writer, and a good observer of little social signals. I still feel that he sometimes goes for cheap laughs at the expense of his pensioner sleuths and their mates -- Elizabeth would know what a fitbit is, even if she would never be bothered to use one. But, perhaps that's the point -- the residents of Cooper Chase Retirement Community save their little grey cells for the things that matter.

Looking forward to the next ones in the series ...