Stop Hiding the Clues: a Love-Hate Relationship with Mysteries

"The Thursday Murder Club" is great, though it indulges a frustrating trope

You’d never hope for a murder mystery to fall in your lap, but when one does…well, you know, lemons and lemonade.

That’s the tone of The Thursday Murder Club, a warm-hearted detective story, where the detectives are four British retirees. They meet once a week for their eponymous club, where they try and solve cold-case files left by their policewoman friend Penny. When their retirement community owner is brutally killed, Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce pool their decades of life experiences to solve the crime. And they even inform the police of their findings…eventually.

Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club (Penguin Books, 2021), 384 Pages

I love detective stories, especially of the British variety: Poirot, Maigret, Sherlock Holmes, Midsummer Murders—if it’s a mystery being solved by a dry, witty detective with a cast of quirky characters getting in the way, sign me up.

And The Thursday Murder Club hits all of those jolly old buttons. We’ve got cute old people, we’ve got “were probably terrifying in their prime” old people, and we’ve got grumpy detectives who could probably only solve the case with help from the old people. What more could you ask for?

Osman provides all the pieces that make for a great murder mystery. The solution isn’t obvious, and you almost feel like you could solve it yourself. Almost.