A few years ago, it felt like everyone and their neighbor were reading The Thursday Murder Club. I was intrigued but hadn’t pulled the proverbial trigger. But here we are and the time has arrived for me to dig in to the story of a group of friends in a retirement village who investigate cold cases for fun, and the new member they invite into their ranks, and the murder that happens that lets them jump into their first in real time crime solving.
This was just the right book to break a two-month reading slump. It was layered, and detailed, and had several storylines weaving together, but it was also eminently readable. This isn’t a book that is afraid of the big things – aging, death, illness, loneliness are all plot themes woven across the various storylines. Some people are caught for their crimes; others are not. Some people receive a sense of closure; others do not. Some people find a sense of purpose; others unfortunately do not. But it also isn’t afraid to weave in the humor that also accompanies these things in our real lives. Richard Osman must have had a hell of a time building out the background world of the retirement village because there are so many asides and running bits in the background that the world feels real, and lived in.
I really don’t have a negative thing to say about this book, but I also can’t seem to convince myself to rate it five stars. Perhaps because I kept forgetting Ron’s name even though he was played by Pierce Brosnan in last year’s movie adaptation (not a bad adaptation, but I was really taken with the parts of the book that didn’t make the cut in going from page to screen and therefore enjoyed it more).
