“Killing someone is easy. Hiding the body, now, that’s usually the hard part. That’s how you get caught. ... They began work on Coopers Chase about ten years ago, when the Catholic Church sold the land. The first residents—Ron, for one, moved in three years later.”
Those are two passages from the first 15 pages of Richard Osman’s mystery The Thursday Murder Club. This is a fun mystery with three murders to solve and quite a group of characters to solve them. First, there’s The Thursday Murder Club made up of four seventy- and eighty-year-olds who live in Cooper’s Chase, a retirement village in Kent, England.
They formed years before to work on unsolved crimes as something fun to do. Elizabeth worked for the government in some secret capacity, Joyce was a nurse, Ibrahim was a psychologist, and Ron is best known for stirring up trouble at local meetings.
As the story begins, the owner of the retirement facility who is planning to expand the village fires his current contractor and hires another. The first contractor is found dead in his home and shortly thereafter, the owner is also killed. And then there’s the unidentified body that is found on top of one of the coffins in the cemetery.
Two of the other main characters, Donna and Chris, are the local law enforcement personnel who, against their better judgement, work with The Thursday Murder Club to solve the mysteries. It’s a different sort of mystery than you’ve probably ever read and is also slated to come out as a film on Netflix.
If you like a mystery with twists and turns and very fun characters, then you must read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.
