My Favorite Book of 2023
The Thursday Murder Club book review – The book is a classic cozy mystery that is bound to hold your attention and capture your heart as completely as it did mine.
This is my favorite kind of book review. I get to tell you how much I loved this book and why you’ll love it too.
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (affiliate link).
Five Stars!
In a peaceful, English, retirement community, four friends investigate cold cases, just for fun. Things become even more fun when their community developer is murdered and they find themselves in the middle of a live case. One body turns to two, then three, until the group is so tangled in the case that their lives may be in danger. Can they catch the killer before it’s too late? Or will one of them be the next victim?
Why is it the best? I’m so glad you asked. 😉
The Characters
The characters are the best part of any good book, and Thursday Murder Club is no exception. Varied and fun, not cardboard cutouts, these characters will steal your heart.
One down-to-business former spy or agent. Her past is classified, so it’s hard to tell. One retired nurse – who pretends to be a wallflower but is actually running the show. One serial protester, past his prime but still down for a good fight. And one mostly retired therapist who holds them all together. On top of that, the author throws in a middle-aged detective looking for love and a young cop eager to prove herself on her first big case.
The Setting
A cozy retirement community in England? Yes, please! Who wouldn’t want to spend their time at Coopers Chase? Or traipsing around the countryside trying to catch a murderer? And by the way, Coopers’ Chase used to be a convent with a hundred nuns and a service hospital.
Need more convincing? There’s a century-old cemetery on the hill and someone’s buried a body there. A body that’s not supposed to be there.
The Plot
With six point-of-view characters investigating (and a few side characters to boot), we get plenty of info to piece together to figure out this mystery. This story will keep you guessing without getting convoluted.
The Setup:
Elizabeth, a former spy/ agent, asks Joyce, a retired nurse how long it would take a woman of a certain weight to bleed out if she were stabbed. And if the boyfriend who had military (but not medical) training would have been able to stop the bleeding enough to save her. Joyce confirms Elizabeth’s suspicion that the ‘robbery gone wrong’ was actually a murder and that it was probably the boyfriend. Elizabeth thanks her and asks her to join her and Ron (serial protester) and Ibrahim (a psychiatrist) for The Thursday Murder Club, on (wait for it) Thursday, in the Jigsaw Room. Joyce agrees.
Elizabeth and her friend Penny, an ex-cop, started the group years ago, investigating cold cases that Penny had access to. Penny is now living in the nursing home at Coopers Chase. Her health has deteriorated to an unconscious state. Elisabeth and Penny’s husband, John, visit her every day. She and Elizabeth never got around to this case so Elizabeth is going to solve it with The Thursday Murder Club for her friend.
Originally, Penny, being the bright and no-nonsense officer that she was, also saw the boyfriend as a suspect and arrested him. He escaped out of the back of her cop car and got away. Nobody knows where he went.
Things get more intense:
To add excitement, the super lame and self-absorbed developer – Ian – who built Coopers’ Chase is trying to develop more land. There’s a lot of money in high-end retirement communities. The graveyard full of nun’s that he promised to not dig up, well, he’s going to dig them up. There’s a loophole in the contract. No one but Ian wants the nuns disturbed.
And… Ian’s dangerous contractor, Tony, is a known killer. He’s said to have killed a drug dealer and the taxi driver who drove the drug dealer. Ian fires Tony, in public so the guy doesn’t kill him on the spot. But that doesn’t mean he won’t kill him later. Which makes Ian the main suspect when the contractor turns up dead soon after. Kill or be killed?
Ian is a prime suspect until he is killed at the graveyard during a protest. And the main question becomes, who didn’t want the graveyard disturbed the most? And are the two deaths related?
If that weren’t enough, Ian’s new contractor, Bogdan, started digging during the protest. And he found the extra bones that weren’t supposed to be there. This is why Ian was killed. This is what someone was trying to hide.
But was Ian the one to kill the contractor? Or was it someone from his past?
The Main Suspects
*Spoilers*
Everyone at the protest is a suspect in Ian’s death. So most of the residents at Coopers Chase. The four friends whittle it down to the most suspicious.
- Bernard Cottle – Joyce’s crush – He was acting suspicious, and it’s well known that the cemetery is his favorite spot, though no one knows why.
- Matthew Mackie – A Reverend – A fake reverend. He’s actually a doctor who had all the means and motive. Not to mention he’s a liar.
- Jason Ritchie – Ron’s son – A photo of him was found by the contractor’s body. It’d be stupid to leave a photo of yourself if you were the murderer, but murderers aren’t always smart. Plus there’s his shady, drug-dealing past and the other drug dealer that was killed. He was at the contractor’s house at the time when the murder took place. Were those the bones buried in the graveyard?
- Karen Playfair – The daughter of the farmer Ian is trying to buy land from. She was close to Ian at the time of his death, but she isn’t really suspicious. She would have only been a girl when the bones were buried. But she could be covering for her dad.
- And probably a few more… Including Ron and Ibraham and even Joyce for a hot minute.
The Ending
*Spoilers*
Satisfying and well-rounded. My favorite part is that each suspect has a legitimate secret and reason for you to have suspected them. You feel even smarter in the end because everyone is hiding something. Brilliant!
So it turns out there are a lot of killers. And a lot of secrets and regrets.
- Bernard Cottle – Turns out he did have a reason to not want the cemetery dug up. When his late wife died he said he sent her ashes with his daughter to India to pour them in the river. But he didn’t. He filled the urn with fake ashes and buried his wife close by the bench where he always sat. He couldn’t dig her ashes up, and he couldn’t bare the shame and loss. Eventually, he died by suicide, leaving a note to explain everything.
- Matthew Mackie – He actually was a reverend, a long time ago. He helped at the hospital before Coopers Chase when the nuns were still at the convent. He fell in love with a nun and they snuck around together. Until one night when she didn’t come. He found her dead by suicide in the chapel. She had been pregnant. He left in exchange for the tragedy to be kept quiet and for her to be buried in the graveyard.
- Jason Ritchie – He didn’t kill Ian, or the body in the graveyard. He was mixed up in the wrong crowd, but when the other drug dealer was killed, he went straight and tried to bury his past and forget it with the rest of his mistakes.
- Karen Playfair – Okay, she doesn’t have a secret. But she is the one who helps them solve the case.
Who Done It?
Which one?
In the end, The Thursday Murder Club solves the mystery.
Elizabeth confronts John, Penny’s husband. He was the one who killed Ian.
John tries to pretend like he is the one who buried the body, but Elizabeth knows better. She knows the only thing that could have made John kill was love, his love for Penny. He couldn’t let the graveyard be dug up because Penny was the one who buried the body there all those years ago. You guessed it. The cold case. The boyfriend that got away, didn’t get away. Penny shot him.
John convinces Elizabeth to let John have a night to tie up his affairs before calling the police. She says yes. She knows that he will end his life, just as she saw him slip Penny extra morphine. Elizabeth says goodbye to Penny.
What about Tony, the contractor?
Bogdan, the new contractor, killed Tony for revenge. The taxi driver was Bogdan’s cousin.
Content warnings
It is a murder mystery so there’s murder and if you’ve made it this far you’ll understand the suicide trigger warning.
What do you think? Have you read it? Did you love it as much as I did? Let me know at [email protected]!