The Thursday Murder Club: The first novel in the multi-million copy bestselling murder mystery series

This is one novel which lives up to every quote about it; it IS smart, it IS funny and best of all, it is the FIRST in a NEW SERIES! Coopers Chase isn't your usual retirement home - oh no, this is a pretty upmarket retirement village where the residents dine on the best of food and have more in the way of entertainment that most of us. But not all the activities are as innocuous as they sound - while Knit and Natter, Chat and Crochet and Learning French are exactly what they say, The Thursday Murder Club is a clandestine and very small, select group accessed by invitation only. When a brutal murder takes place with connections to Coopers Chase, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim get their first 'live' case and set about their investigations . . . What an absolutely fantastic read! I'm a big fan of Richard Osman; having enjoyed Pointless for many years I love House of Games which - if you haven't seen it - is one of the most entertaining half hours on tv. Don't be fooled by the gossipy style of this one; it could rival any Agatha Christie for proficiency and is an exciting and thrilling read laced with wonderful humour throughout. I was completely enthralled and awake far later than I should have been last night reading to the end. The characters are beautifully drawn and I felt privileged to get to know them. I remember thinking about half way through that I hoped this would turn into a series and was delighted to discover that it is what is planned. Yay! Whilst the 'whodunnit' part of the read is very perplexing, taking stoic detective work to discover the real murderer there was so much going on that I didn't really have time to ponder on it. Clever and enigmatic with some very plausible red herrings, this is a novel which easily earns all five sparkling stars and the highest recommendation I can offer.

Picture the scene, an expensive retirement village in Kent (think pilates, Zumba, a gym, a swimming pool and cafe), called Cooper's Chase Retirement Village, built on the site of a former convent and four retirees meet every Thursday to try to solve old murder cases. Then the retirement village's shady owner Ian Ventham decides he wants to expand by digging up the nun's graveyard and cutting out his builder and minority partner Tony Curran, the retirees are up in arms and Tony Curran is found bludgeoned to death in his own home. Soon there is an embarrassment of murders, old and new, for the club to solve, working alongside local detective DCI Chris Hudson and PC Donna de Freitas. There are red herrings galore and it is all set in my corner of the world (I don't know why it gives me a thrill when characters are on a train that stops in my home town of Orpington, but it does). Think Miss Marple but with an iPad and brought right up to date with modern concerns. It had a plethora of engaging characters, all with interesting backstories. I had two niggles with this book. First, Richard Osman writes in the present tense a lot and it can be difficult to determine whether one of the characters is speaking/writing or whether the author is speaking directly to the reader, then he mixes his tenses, like this: Ron had come to her with the photograph that Karen Playfair had seen. Karen would have been young at the time, but she was sure. Elizabeth had tried to piece it all together in her head. It seemed impossible at first. But the more she thought about it, it began to seem horribly true. She worked out the steps, one by one. Ibrahim had come back an hour ago, with the final piece of the jigsaw, so now is the time. The case is solved and only justice remains. I could follow it but the changing tenses pulled me out of the story to be honest. My second niggle may merely be a formatting issue with my ARC, scenes changed and the character changed within the same paragraph with no warning. One minute Elizabeth and Ron were talking in the Jigsaw Room and the next sentence features Chris and Donna watching TV and can take a sentence or two before you realise the change. Now, as I say this could be formatting of my ARC, I seemed to lose the chapter numbers partway through the book so it could be that the final version doesn't have this issue. Overall, loved this quirky gang of octogenarian sleuths, able to find out what the police cannot (just like Miss Marple) and would love to read another one. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Thoroughly enjoyed it, and there were times when I could almost hear Richard's voice telling the story. I am thinking of recommending it to my sister as I know she loves this kind of thing.