Review: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Synopsis: In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved killings.

But when a local property developer shows up dead, 'The Thursday Murder Club' find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

The four friends, 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?

Not having any idea who Richard Osman is and what he had previously written, I came into this with no preconceptions. I loved the premise of the story when I requested a review copy.

No surprises - I loved it! The story follows the first person narrative of newly arrived Joyce (as diary entries) and the standard third person narrative for the rest of the book. The setting is an up-market retirement village - Coopers Chase - populated by a vast range of retired (or semi-retired) professionals, four of who make up the Thursday Murder Club. This group meet together to look over cold cases from the files of one of the groups' former members - however, when real life steps in and the property developer Ian Ventham is murders, the group decide to get in on the sleuthing themselves. 

" ... if today was anything to go by, this whole murder investigation is going to be the most enormous fun ..."

This reminded me slightly of Charlaine Harris' "Aurora Teagarden" series - so if you love that, then you will also love this one.

The story builds up slowly and has a great twist at the end. It is witty, suspenseful, serious, fun; the characters are endearing, slightly questionable in their ethics, and nowhere close to retiring!. I do hope there is more.