The Thursday murder Club by Richard Osman | @richardosman @VikingBooksUK @EllieeHud | #blogtour

Absolutely delighted to host a stop on the blog tour for The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman today! Huge thanks to Ellie at Viking for the invitation to join and for the fab review copy!

Author : Richard Osman
Title : The Thursday Murder Club
Pages : 376
Publisher : Viking / Penguin UK
Publication date : September 3, 2020

| ABOUT THE BOOK |

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?

| MY THOUGHTS |

Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club has been one of the most talked about books of the year and I for one was incredibly excited from the very first moment it was announced by the publisher. That feels like an eternity ago, by the way. But boy, was it worth the wait. I absolutely loved it!

Picture of Richard’s book and I having a jolly good time by the pool in Tuscany.

I’m nowhere near retirement age but I’ll gladly sign up for the Thursday Murder Club right now if the members will have me. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron are four of the most unlikely friends I’ve ever met but they captured my heart from the moment I was introduced to them. The four friends live in a retirement village and once a week, on Thursday, they meet up to investigate unsolved killings. Hence their name. Seriously! Where do I sign up?! But then, a local property developer is found dead and it looks like our band of senior citizens has their first live case on their hands. Can they solve this mysterious death and catch a killer?

Amateur sleuthing with a difference, then. Because these four friends have some excellent tricks up their sleeves. Not just in the way they are able to, in all subtlety, manipulate people into telling them things they shouldn’t. They have quite the mysterious person in their very own little circle whose secretive ways manage to discover information even the police can’t seem to get to.

Meanwhile, life at the retirement village goes its own way. The reader gets to know a few of the residents and learn some of their stories and this is where Richard Osman shows remarkable insightfulness. Some people live in the present, some in the past. They deal with all the familiar issues, from illness to guilt, love, loss and grief. And as is always the case, some deal better than others. Or seem to, anyway.

As for the mystery that needs solving, just when you start to think you are close to figuring things out, Osman turns the whole thing onto its head. Red herrings are pretty much everywhere and the list of potential suspects seemed to grow so fast that I had a hard time narrowing it down. But I loved every minute of it! This is most definitely one of those books where everything just seemed to fall into place for me from the first page. With a superb plot, brilliant writing, fabulously wonderful and engaging characters and a lovely dash of humour, The Thursday Murder Club is a whodunnit that kept me guessing until the end.

I normally prefer my crime fiction dark, gritty and gruesome but something about The Thursday Murder Club instantly captivated me. Richard Osman’s writing immediately drew me in. There’s something utterly delightful about the entire book but also about the quintessential British village life of the characters we meet in this retirement village. Tea and cake, anyone?

I truly think this is an impressive debut by Richard Osman and I’m incredibly excited to know there’s more to come from him and the Thursday Murder Club. I can’t wait to hang out with Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim again next year! Not just because of the murder aspect but also because I feel there is so much more to discover about these characters. In the meantime, this one goes onto my list of books of the year and I heartily recommend you give it a go, if you haven’t done so already.

The Thursday Murder Club is available to buy!

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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |

Richard Osman is an author, producer and television presenter. The Thursday Murder Club is his first novel. He is well known for TV shows including Pointless and Richard Osman’s House of Games. As the creative director of Endemol UK, Richard has worked as an executive producer on numerous shows including Deal Or No Deal and 8 Out of 10 Cats. He is also a regular on panel and game shows such as Have I Got News For You, Would I Lie To You and Taskmaster.