The Thursday Murder Club is a 2020 murder mystery novel by Richard Osman, a notable British television presenter. The book is Osman’s debut novel and the inaugural installment in his Thursday Murder Club series. It quickly became a Sunday Times bestseller. The story follows a group of seniors living at a retirement home who investigate a series of murders on its grounds.
Each Thursday, the titular Thursday Murder Club—a group of pensioners living at the Coopers Chase retirement village—assembles to put their amateur investigative skills to the test by revisiting cold cases. The group includes founding members Elizabeth, Ron, Ibraham, and its newest member, Joyce, who was brought in to help after Elizabeth’s co-founder, a former detective named Penny, developed dementia and was moved to the facility’s nursing home. While Coopers Chase used to be a convent for the Sisters of the Holy Church, it is now owned by the greedy developer Ian Ventham, who’s angling to expand into the neighboring property.
One day, Ian announces that he intends to build a new complex called “the Woodlands” atop a graveyard on the property where the Sisters of the Holy Church are buried. His announcement is met with outrage, particularly from Ron, a former union leader, and Father Matthew Mackie, the resident priest. Ian fires his lead builder, Tony Curran, and replaces him with contractor Bogdan Jankowski. Later that day, Tony is found murdered.
Predictably, the Thursday Murder Club launches its own investigation. First, the group discovers that Ian profited from Tony’s murder, inheriting his shares of Coopers Chase. They plot to enlist Police Constable Donna De Freitas, a low-level officer who delivers home security lessons at the retirement home yet dreams of investigating serious crimes.
Little do they know, Donna is already investigating a photograph left beside Tony’s corpse, picturing him beside drug dealer Bobby Tanner and Ron’s son, Jason Ritchie—Tony’s partners in the drug trade. Soon, the police learn that Tony got three untraceable calls on the day of his murder. Donna recognizes the number as Jason’s and calls him in for questioning.
Soon, we learn that Jason was mailed a copy of the photograph mere days before Tony was killed, triggering memories of their gang’s dissolution after they all witnessed Tony murdering a drug dealer. Now, Jason is worried his life might be in danger and reaches out to the Thursday Murder Club in the hopes of tracking Bobby down. Finding him, Elizabeth rules Bobby out as a suspect, turning instead to the gang’s elusive fourth member, Turkish Gianni—a thug Bobby believes Tony snitched on years ago.
Meanwhile, it isn't long before Ian returns to Coopers Chase to break ground on the Woodlands, but a group of retirees block his and Bogdan’s trucks from entering. Irked, Ian calls Constable Donna and the rest of the police to break up the crowd. But before they can, Ian starts physically fighting Father Mackie. Shortly after, Ian collapses and dies on the way to his car. Meanwhile, Bogdan begins digging up the cemetery by hand but discovers an unmarked set of bones.
Bogdan informs Elizabeth of the bones he discovered, and she asks a friend of hers to analyze them. It turns out that the remains belonged to a man killed back in the 1970s. The Thursday Murder Club encounters several red herrings as they try to identify the remains, uncovering several secrets along the way. Ultimately, they theorize that the murders might be an attempt to block the discovery of the skeleton by halting the new development.
Soon, the group discovers that Coopers Chase has been sold, as has the neighboring land, owned by Gordon Playfair. While Gordon had long resisted selling, his daughter, Karen, knew that his hesitation had to do with Ian, and she was keen to get him out of the way. But when Jason accuses Karen of murdering Ian, her pure-hearted reaction convinces Jason of her innocence. Karen suggests he speak to John, Penny’s husband and Karen’s former vet, who lived nearby in the 70s.
Elizabeth visits John, whose suspicious stories jog her memory about a case that Penny had worked on yet avoided bringing to the Murder Club: the stabbing of a young woman named Annie Madeley, likely perpetrated by her boyfriend, Peter Mercer. When Elizabeth presses him on it, John admits that Penny killed Peter years ago, after she realized he would likely get away with Annie’s murder. Then, when John realized the development might uncover Penny’s crime, he killed Ian in order to cover it up.
Shocked, Elizabeth warns John that she’ll have to turn him and Penny into the police the following morning. That night, John takes—and administers to Penny—a drug that kills them both. Meanwhile, Bogdan confesses to Elizabeth’s forgetful husband that he killed Tony, as well as Gianni, after they had his friend—the sole witness to Tony’s crime—killed.
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