I reviewed this book last year for Journal magazine and decided to post the review on my blog in the light of Richard Osman's new novel, The Man Who Died Twice that was recently released.
The Thursday Murder Club, which was his debut novel, is a good story sprinkled with dry British humour, colourful character development and enough mystery to keep you glued. Though fun, it’s not all mindless frivolity, and it produces ample food for thought.
Picture the scene: four elderlies, grey-haired and wrinkled – the typical mental image one might conjure when picturing ‘old’ – sit around a table in the Jigsaw Room at the Coopers Chase retire village for their two-hour slot between that of Art History and Conversational French. On the table are a number of police records and documents of an unsolved murder obtained from the files of a former police officer who is now comatose in the village's nursing home. Just like the jigsaws that occupy some of their fellow residents, these mysteries are the shared fascination that keeps their minds active and inquisitive.
As the reader gets to know each of the four members of the Thursday Murder Club it soon becomes clear that, no matter their age or whether they used to work, like Joyce, as a qualified nurse, like Elizabeth a member of the secret service, Ibrahim, a highly esteemed psychiatrist, or Ron, a hot-headed trade union leader; when one lives in an old age home, grizzled and etched with life’s many trials, you are tarred with the same brush and discarded as one of the aged; over the hill.
In The Thursday Murder Club, Osman succeeds in dispelling this preconceived notion. He blows new life into a cast of characters, each with unique talents, peculiarities and life experience, and by making the reader privy to their favourite pastime – solving murders – we become enthralled by the four wise old owls as they become interesting people in their own right, despite being slightly longer in the tooth.
I felt a particular affinity to Elizabeth, a tough old bird who one assumes must have been a force of nature during her career in the secret service where she operated in various war zones around the world. She is my kind of girl; one who, with an exceptionally sharp mind, has the ability to drill down to the essence of a matter. Energetic and focused, it becomes clear that Elizabeth is the foursome’s leader, all while taking tender care of her ailing husband.
Then there is Joyce, (I pictured her as a typical Rose, remember her from The Golden Girls?) who thinks of herself as overlooked, hardly ever noticed, but who brings to the table her gift for gathering information unobtrusively and with charm. Ibrahim’s mathematical brain and medical expertise enable him to analyse circumstances and calculate the timing between events down to the second. Ron fills out the team with his experience as labour union leader and a cynical nature that precludes him from ever believing a single word anyone tells him, while Elizabeth provides the investigating nous and the tenacity required to keep the case on track.
When a real-time murder takes place on their doorstep, the club identifies 26-year-old police constable Donna De Freitas, who happens to visit the home to talk to the pensioners about ‘Practical Tips for Home Security’, as a valuable ally and insider in the investigation. She is tasked to shadow Chris Hudson, the detective chief inspector on the case, and together they form an unlikely alliance with the Thursday Club.
The narrator is Joyce who, having renewed her habit of daily journaling, keeps the reader up to speed. And Osman succeeds in driving his tale forward seamlessly despite a slew of twists and turns and a jumbled timeline.
To solve the murder of Tony Curran, a drug dealer who had used the building of the new extension at Coopers Chase as a front, the team uses their individual talents to work with – and around – the police in their quest to find the killer.
The message of this quirky thriller is this: underestimate septuagenarians at your peril. These are the people society should rely on. They are fonts of knowledge who can tap into a wealth of experience and expertise, but who can also summon unexpected drive and energy if something piques their interest. A murder, say.
An astonishing debut, Osman delicately tackles the many challenges of aging and death with surprising insight for a sprightly 51-year-old. There is no shying away from the realities that people face in the third act of their lives, but this tale also offers hope and inspiration that, upon entering one’s seventh or eighth decade, there remains much to live for and there is much fun to be had.
With experience as an English comedian, producer, television presenter and writer for BBC quiz, talk and comedy shows such as Pointless, Richard Osman’s House of Games and The Fake News Show, to name a few, Osman cleverly mixes mirth and compassion in his delightful first novel, an outlandish whodunit with eccentric and lovable characters set in an unconventional setting.
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