Richard OSMAN : The thursday murder club #1

Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves.
A female cop with her first big case.
A brutal murder.
Welcome to… the Thursday Murder Club
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.
When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late ?  

 

 

 

Mid-book, I clearly thought this novel would be heading for 5 stars, because of its wit and the tenderness you can feel in the author's depiction of his characters. But I ended up rating it with 4 stars, which is already very good.

 

Let me explain :

- it's a cosy mystery, in a village of retired people, and for once, older people are not portrayed as quirky and funny (well, a little), but also as simple human beings, with a past, loves they still feel and loves they lost ;

- it's sometimes moving, but mostly really funny and I enjoyed how Elizabeth always manages to get what she wants with the kindest of smiles and lots of relations, or how Ron plays the forgetful old man in front of the police officer into tricking him to hire the people they need for the case ;

- I also enjoyed that, while it's an upper-class place with rather upper-class people, yet nobody takes grand airs and Joyce is the only low-class villager here - she is the narrator, all of us low-class can relate to her !

 

Now let's get to the cons :

- as we near the end, there are many possible suspects who become almost convicted and there were too many ;

- what really bothered me, to be honest, was that there are characters who committed murders and got away with it, mostly ; they killed murderers, yes, those murderers may have not been convicted through normal police procedures, yes, but I don't like the idea of several (several !) people killing others and thinking this is right. I'm not okay with that.

All in all, this was a very pleasant, enjoyable, sometimes moving, always funny novel and I will love reading the next, I gather. I already put it on hold at the library. But if there are more "getting away with righteous murders", I'll quit.