Because I slogged through the last book I reviewed here, and I’m also on deadline, I don’t have anything to review here today. In fact, I might share a few of Sandie Herron’s reviews here this week so I can catch up. Today, Sandie reviews the first Thursday Murder Club mystery by Richard Osman, the audiobook of The Thursday Murder Club. Thank you, Sandie.

The Thursday Murder Club
Written by Richard Osman
Narrated by Lesley Manville
Series:  Thursday Murder Club, Book 1
Unabridged Audiobook
Penguin Audio (9/22/2020)     
ASIN:  B086DL5TVZ
Listening Length:  12 hours 26 minutes
Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2021), Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel (2021)

Residents of a posh retirement home in Kent, England are eating lunch, when Elizabeth approaches our narrator Joyce to ask a question.  How long would it take for a woman’s body to bleed out from knife wounds?  Joyce had been a nurse, so with a bit more information, she provided an accurate answer.  However, Joyce is curious how the question was relevant.  Elizabeth reveals that a group of residents meets every Thursday in the puzzle room to try to solve old police case files.  There are many activities at the Coopers Chase Retirement Village which are carefully scheduled, and this is the slot for studying Japanese opera, a title meant to scare others away.  Other club members include Ibrahim, who was/is a psychiatrist and Ron Ritchie, a trade union leader.  Elizabeth, well, she was a spy and stories abound about her.

When a member of the local police is sent to lecture Village residents on security, she has scarcely begun when Elizabeth interrupts and tells her they all knew to lock their doors and knew not to give out personal information to the Nigerians, so would she please cover something interesting?  Police Constable Donna DeFreitas does just that, even joining the group for lunch afterward, where she is impressed with the Village.  Once a convent, local real estate developer Ian Ventham had taken years to renovate the entire estate, with a final stage yet to come.  Ventham takes this phase to fire the old contractor after a meeting with Cooper Chase residents regarding the movement of the Convent cemetery.  Every body will need to be carefully moved, a process Ventham is already starting to work around.  The contractor is bludgeoned to death in his home. 

Seizing on the opportunity to have a real murder to solve, Elizabeth stages a visit to the local police with Joyce.  Their scheme assures that their favorite constable, Donna DeFreitas, would be included on the murder team.  Ian Ventham can’t slow progress, so his new contractor, Bogdan, sets to work preparing to move the graves and caskets.  What he encounters are residents of Coopers Chase standing in his way.  Ventham is so livid that when DCI Chris Hudson arrives and tries to calm him, Ventham drops dead.  Club members figure about 70 seniors were now suspects.

The Thursday Murder Club is in its glory with two cases to solve.  Hudson and DeFreitas want to sideline Elizabeth, but she manages to manipulate them into giving her pertinent information.  Elizabeth is approached by Bogdan who shows her something he’s dug up in the cemetery: bones buried on top of a casket.  Now the Club can share information with the police, and the chase to find the killers is afoot.

While many of the circumstances presented bring laughter, the writing Joyce does in her journal which fills the reader in on the action sometimes turns tender.  Since the residents are all elderly, death is a part of everyday life at Cooper’s Chase.  If I wasn’t tearing up from laughter, then it was from sadness over the bittersweet memories shared.  The characters all had full lifetimes of experience and intelligence. I confess that some British-isms went over my head.  The narrator was very British and excellent.  A one-hour interview with the author followed this audiobook and was quite interesting. The author revealed that book 2 to the series was on its way to be published.