This was a charming read, the 4 main pensioners in a luxury residential village became the Thursday murder club. This is well written, witty and clever, I hope there will be a follow up.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for a review.

Simply brilliant! Clever, drily funny and very quirky.
This is what I would class as a thinker's murder mystery for the introvert. What do I mean? For me it wasn't a brash laugh out loud funny book but a hilarious laughing inside yourself book! Which, in case anyone is wondering, is a massive compliment!
I thoroughly enjoyed how this book is free from conventional genre boundaries and how fascinatingly original it is.
It helps that I live in Haywards Heath and was born and raised in Kent, so the place names Osman uses are oh so familiar to me.
The characters are simply amazing. They are amazing because of the dialogue, the adventures, the mishaps and the setting.
Visit Coopers Chase Retirement Village with its contemporary upscale restaurant, pool, events and wonderful landscaping, to meet The Thursday Murder Club comprising Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim.
I loved the way these 70 + and 80+ old residents were portrayed as astute, manipulate, conniving, talented people with past professions that make them the elderly people they are today. Old but not decrepit! Such a refreshing way to showcase an older generation.
The band of four are way ahead in the detective game than bumbling, lonely, overweight DCI Chris Hudson who is ably assisted by sparky, much more switched on PC Donna De Freitas. The way in which Elizabeth uses her connections and her agile mind to skilfully wrangle confidential information from the DCI, engineer Donna's immediate transfer from giving community talks about window locks to a place on CID and the courage she displays in confronting people with the truth is outrageous, funny and deserving of encore after encore!
The police and the murder club members work in parallel, intersecting at points in this very well written, very engaging tale of murder. The plot is well crafted to keep the reader agog at all the developments, unable to see what is coming next and genuinely intrigued about who has done what. Towards the end it feels as if the answers are just in the next paragraph when suddenly the story swerves and leads the reader in a different direction.
You definitely need your wits about you but sadly my wits are a little inferior to those of Mr Osman.
This is a book I cannot recommend enough and I am already excited and eager to see what book 2 will be about.
Bravo Mr Osman and the Thursday Murder Club!

A real romp of a murder mystery with an eclectic, eccentric cast of characters. Humour abounds, with lots of laugh out loud moments, but a great deal of pathos too. This is a great reminder that just because someone is getting on in years they are no less of a person with character and personality than they ever were. A wonderful illustration of an elderly community - I want to live in Cooper's Chase. I loved the relationships between the residents and also with the mesmerised police officers, but some very sad and stark reminders of the frailty of life. A pleasure to read.

Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim and Joyce are the 'Thursday Murder Club', meeting every Thursday to go over old, unsolved cases to see if there's anything the police might've missed, until the day a real murder lands in their laps instead. Who said retirement had to be boring?
Crime isn't usually one of my go-to genres, but this was really enjoyable - well written with well-dfined characters; funny without turning into parody and cozy without becoming twee, with a very distinct narrative voice (if they don't get Osman to, at least, be A narrator for the audiobook version, that really would be criminal!)
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review.

Thank you, Penguin, for a copy of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I have heard good things about this book. Even Richard Osman himself on TV so I thought I would request this on NetGalley before being archived.
The story is set in a luxury retirement village called Coopers Chase. Four residents and friends meet up on a Thursday for The Murder club, they solve unsolved Police murder cases. To see if they can find out anything that has missed. At first this is just a hobby to them. For their brains to tick over but when they get involved in a real murder case, they can’t wait to solve the mystery.
I really enjoyed this story of The Thursday Murder club with it’s quirky characters who are trying to solve a murder case. Richard Osman really understand the mannerisms and actions of the elderly generation and like how he proclaims that just because you are old, you are not done yet. This is a heart-warming story with some humour in it too and was a joy to read. This book is a great start for Richard Osman and I can’t wait to see what he does in book two.

I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a book so much in a long time. It has humour, mystery and is a very good read. When I saw it was written by a celebrity I did wonder if it would be any good but within the first few pages I was hooked. The Thursday Murder club is based in a retirement home and one I would be happy to retire to. The elderly residents get together to solve murders. Elizabeth is an ex spy and her friend Joyce a retired nurse, along with a retired psychiatrist and an ex trade union official and a few more of their contacts become involved in solving two recent murders. It was such a change to read about older characters who were still enjoying life and playing an important part in society. I am so pleased to see the film rights have already been sold and it’s going to be a series, well done Richard Osman.

From experience, celebrities, with a few exceptions, don’t usually make good writers, despite the hype accompanying their offerings, so I expected to be disappointed. However, I was pleasantly surprised and entertained by The Thursday Murder Club.

Four elderly residents living in an affluent retirement complex in leafy Kent meet weekly to investigate old, unsolved murders, courtesy of the fifth member of the group, ex-policewoman Penny, who now lies in a coma in the retirement home medical facility. Elizabeth, with her unspoken but often hinted at background in international espionage, Joyce, an ex-nurse, Ibrahim, once a psychiatrist, and Ron, a salt-of-the-earth militant old union leader, are the club members, as well as friends supporting and looking out for each other. Feisty, determined, busy and still very much alive thank you very much, despite the hands they have inevitably been dealt by old age and lives lived.

When an actual real life murder takes place on the complex, the Thursday murder club switch their talents to assisting the police team - often one step ahead of the cosy detectives Chris and Donna assigned to the case.

As crime dramas go its Sunday night cosy tv serial rather than gory, on the edge of your seat psychological thriller stuff, but none the worse for that. Red herrings, coincidences aplenty, and highly unlikely police corroboration, but lots of wit, humour and gentleness. Sensitive handling of a lot of things the residents, and us all, sometimes face - dementia, bereavement, family relationships, suicide - which make the story quite sad and wistful at times, but overall Richard Osman’s personality and quick wit shine through.

It’s the sort of place I’d quite like to live (in a number of years time!) and I hope there will be a resident like Richard Osman there too because it sounds like he quite likes it too.

If I had one criticism it would be the plot got a bit confusing with some dead-ends and a myriad of similarly named suspects, but overall the book was enjoyable and entertaining and I would read more.

One of not most anticipated reads this year and it didn’t disappoint! Four eighty-somethings gather once a week ... on a Thursday ... in the retirement villages rec room to discuss unsolved murders for an hour... to use Joyce’s words “a few glasses of wine and a mystery. Very social, but also gory. It is good fun”.
I thoroughly enjoyed every moment I spent in this books pages, the humour and the slow unraveling of a many layered mystery. But it’s the characters that are the life of this story and I loved them all, they made me laugh, they made me sad, they made me ponder life.... I didn’t think I’d ever say that a murder mystery novel would give me the warm fuzzies but here we are 🤷🏼‍♀️😂 I’m extremely happy to see that this is the beginning of a series and I’ll be eagerly awaiting the next instalment. I need a history on the well connected Elizabeth. For fans of feisty pensioners and underdogs.

Thank you to Penguin Books U.K. /Viking for an advance reading copy via NetGalley of ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ by Richard Osman.

This is listed as the first of two cosy murder mysteries set in the Coopers Chase Retirement Village, featuring an ensemble cast of its residents.

Every Thursday four friends meet up and discuss unsolved murders. They are Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron. We learn that the club’s founder, Penny, had been an inspector in the Kent Police for many years. She brought files on unsolved murders to the group. She wasn’t suppose to have these cold case files but no one knew. Currently Penny is in a nursing home following a stroke. The group continues to meet.

When a local property developer is found murdered, the Thursday Murder Club decide to investigate their first live case. To do so effectively they have to insert themselves into the local police investigation. They do this by befriending DC Donna De Freitas and her boss, DCI Chris Hudson.

This was a delight from start to finish. I expect that it will appeal to a wide readership. It was lovely having its main characters post sixty-five years in age. Osman clearly understands that although peoples’ bodies age their essential selves don’t. He doesn’t shy away from having his characters facing the realities of ageing, illness, death, and bereavement.

This is a very accomplished novel in terms of characterisation and intricate plotting of its mysteries. There are a number of mysteries aside from the initial murder with attendant twists, that felt organic rather than twists for twists sake.

There was also a good deal of gentle comedy and very relatable observations about daily life. It brought many smiles to my face.

As I started reading on its publication day, I bought the unabridged audiobook to compliment my eARC. It is narrated by Lesley Manville, who was an excellent choice. The audiobook also has a bonus 48 minute interview with the author, conducted by Marion Keyes, that provided interesting background information on the novel and Osman’s writing process.

I know that I will be recommending it widely to friends who love crime fiction as well as anticipating Book 2 next year.

Overall, a wonderful all round mystery, well deserving the prepublication buzz and bound to be an out-of-the-gate bestseller.

I absolutely adored this book - as you’d expect from Richard Osman it’s clever and humorous, but it is also warm-hearted, full of fabulous characters and quite touching at times. I do love a cosy crime and what’s better than a bunch of elderly excentric murderer hunters in a classy retirement village? I do hope there will be more instalments, this is an excellent start to a series!

The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of friends who like investigating unsolved murders, their skills are put into practice when a real-life murder occurs, and other bodies start to turn up.

I really liked the characters in the book, I liked how they were written and how each of their perspectives was written in a different way to make their personalities stand out. The book does jump between characters to tell the story and I quite liked that as some characters knew more about what was going on than others. I enjoyed the plot of the book and the setting, I liked how everything seemed to revolve around the retirement village – both in the present and the past. I also liked the reveals in the book and stories that accompanied these reveals.

I just found the book really hard to read, I loved the characters and their personalities but the book had so much information/detail that I found boring and slow paced and made it hard for me to concentrate. Also, even though I liked the reveals, I did not like the mystery aspect of the book – or lack of mystery because the characters find/solve things way too easily and so there is no build up/suspense to the reveals and what was happening in the book.

2/5

I didnt know what to expect with this, and im not sure how i feel now i ve finished. Its not youre normal crime style book, but its intreguing

From the synopsis I knew this wasn’t going to be the usual crime fiction tale. Its set in an up market retirement village in the Kent countryside where four of the residents meet up every week to discuss and investigate police cold cases. The information on the cases is supplied by a retired Chief Inspector who is now a resident in the village care home who just happened to have “held on to” a few files after she left the force. The members of the club (The Thursday Murder Club) are all very different – an unlikely group of friends who are at times hilarious in their antics – but they have all held prominent positions in their former years and as such have interesting tales to tell. Suddenly the group find themselves with a real life murder case on their hands and take great pleasure in helping the police solve the case. I found the book slow to start but it picked up and was an enjoyable read. I was given a free copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I read The Thursday Murder Club over a couple of days. It was an interesting premise but the book just didn’t do it for me. I found the pace somewhat slow and laboured. Sorry but this wasn’t one for me. 2.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Books UK and the author for the chance to review.

I really enjoyed this book, well done Mr Osman! The characters were adorable and there was so much going on but everything was resolved in the end. I live in West Sussex, not far from Haywards Heath, so it was great reading about local places. And oh how I would love to end up in Coopers Chase! I think old police files should be given to more of our senior citizens to solve. Can’t wait for the next book in this series and please, put this on TV. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for letting me review it.

Rating 4.5/5

There is always that moment of trepidation when you are about to dive into a book by someone well known, that you have seen to be witty and humorous, because there is a level of expectation that comes along with it. I am happy to say that in this instance The Thursday Murder Club was even better than I was hoping it would be.

It is definitely the characters that made me fall in love with this book, our four main characters Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron are a great combination. They all have very different personalities but each possesses qualities that are important to the group and don’t seem to mind if they are occasionally playing outside of the rules.

I especially liked Elizabeth her tenacity and uncanny ability to get exactly what she wants and the fact that the others just go with it knowing it’ll turn out ok in the end. I also loved Joyce, her subtlety, the way she takes everything in, it was great to have diary entries from her, I loved her voice and she was very funny.

The story itself was very entertaining, cosy mystery can sometimes be a bit of a hit or miss for me, but this one was just right. I liked that there were a lot of questions that needed to be answered and that it wasn’t obvious where the story was headed. There were enough moving parts and misdirection to keep things interesting and had me wondering how everything tied together. It also had me giggling a lot throughout, there is something about the author’s keen observations on life that are very funny without feeling like they were set up to be.

I really can’t recommend The Thursday Murder Club enough, and I am very much looking forward to joining the gang again in the future for some more fun and adventure.

Four friends in a retirement community get together weekly for their Thursday Murder Club. Soon they're investigating a murder closely followed by a second one. This case has them all entangled and each one was present at the second murder. Can they get to the bottom of it and find the truth?

Being a fan of the author i was instantly excited to read this and it didnt disappoint. The story is well written and detailed. There are some clever and well built twists through the story. There are many side mysteries along the way that all slowly come together. I figured out some of it but not all. The plot is a steady build but kept me reading until the end. The ending was really good and finished the story perfectly. I liked that everything was tied off in one way or another. The characters are all likeable and instantly recognisable as someone we know. A brilliant mystery.

This book is everywhere! Fab read, fast paced with great characters and a cracking storyline. Really enjoyable and will definitely be purchasing Richard’s next book.

The Thursday murder club is a murder mystery whose protagonists are, rather unique.
Four people nearing 80 years investigate old inactive cases of police.

Living in a luxury retirement house and fighting old age battles, Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim and Joyce keep their brains active by brainstorming over the old cases.
They keep themselves busy with their investigation and solving the mysteries. Imagine now, if they get hold of a new live murder case and that then they are also witnesses to a murder. Their excitement, how much they might subdue it, knows no bound.

Four of them team up with the local detective DCI Chris Hudson and DC Donna De Freitas to solve the puzzling and unique murder mystery.

Elizabeth is the implicit leader of the group. She is the one who delegates jobs to the rest of the team. She navigates herself skillfully. Her past is hidden (on purpose) and appears shadowy.
Joyce is the newest member of the club. She found her way in the club through her baking skills. It is through diary notes the reader’s progress through the chapters. She was a nurse with NHS and now brings in medical knowledge to the team.
Ibrahim is the technical person and brings in the logic and deductions along with Ron Ritchie.
DCI Hudson with much reluctance agrees to take help of the Thursday murder club. As the chapter progresses, the plot gets complicated, and the turn of events blindsides the reader.
The Thursday Murder Club is a quirky murder mystery that will keep you hooked until the last page.

Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin UK for the copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

What a great book. I want to live there when the time comes. Four residents with so much time on their hands start investigating old cases that another resident who was a former police inspector was interested in. Unfortunately Penny was poorly so Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim got to together and formed The Thursday Murder Club. It was joined by Joyce a former nurse and the book goes through their thoughts having fun along the way. A local developer wants to develop more land a part of which is a cemetery for the nuns who lived in the home which was a former nunnery and here the fun begins for the sleuths. Murder, mystery and outwitting the local police become their fun of choice and they try to solve the murders etc. I would love to know what Elizabeth was in her former life – ummm could hazard a guess but would probably be wrong
I always hope I have the murderer as the book wends its way towards one person only to find I was way out as another character is introduced which could be the one. This is why this book was so good and flowed along at an easy pace.

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read Richard Osman’s book and also the publishers. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it without hesitation and hope there will be more in the series.