It is always a pleasure to introduce your friends to a new writer or musician, etc with whom you are taken. Well, I have one for you, although many of you may already know him. But he’s new to me. This is Richard Osman, who I have learned is a well-known and much liked TV personality in the UK. “The Thursday Murder Club” is his first novel. It was published in 2020 and he has written and published 3 more, all successors in what promises to be a long and much loved series.(Move over Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot and Gideon Fell and–well, fill in the blanks, if your are a fan of that noble art form, British mysteries.)

TMC, as I’ll refer to it now, takes place in an apparently fairly expensive retirement center in Kent, not too far from London. There is a group there who call themselves “The Thursday Murder Club.” Their more-or less leader is Elizabeth, a retired sleuth of some kind, never really specified very well–was she a cop, MI5 or what? Anyhow, she has the skills and the nerve to do the job of leading. Then there is Joyce, her more subdued companion.. A retired nurse and a close observer of human behavior, Joyce keeps a diary which provides the first person account of what’s happening and offers many important pieces of information as well as opinions. The two men are Ibrihim, a retired Psychiatrist and Ron, a former leftist politician/union guy who has nonetheless chosen to spend his declining years among the rich.

Elizabeth is currently married, the others all widowed. Elizabeth’s husband Stephen is a source of puzzlement I never figured out. He seems to have some kind of mental disorder which prevents his keeping company with other people or indeed leaving their room at all. But he takes care of himself well enough when Elizabeth is busy and plays a tough game of chess.(Does this mean that all those people who have beaten me at chess have had something wrong with their minds? I doubt it, my wife is one of them). Elizabeth loves him dearly but has her life to lead outside of their room too, and does so.

There are some other residents of importance but I won’t burden you or me with discussing all of them. Very important in the plot are two cops, a young lady, 20ish Donna DeFreitas and a not so young gentleman, 40ish Chris Hudson who is overweight and constantly hassled by Donna to watch his diet. They introduce a bit of legality and officialdom into the story.

But the story is definitely about amateur sleuthings, much more than legal pursuit. The TMC meets weekly and they review an old, unsolved murder case to see if they can crack it(Elizabeth seems to have access to all kinds of old information about such cases). They are a combination of irritated and amused when Donna goes to Coopers Chase to give a presentation on retirement village living and security. They treat her with tolerance, slight cynicism and warmth.

When a murder occurs involving two of the entrepreneurs of the Close it is natural(given their nearby office)and about a sure thing if you know your mystery novels, that these two are going to get involved. They do, and there follows an increasingly complicated but always fascinating story of the club trying to sort things out, sometimes getting help from the police and sometimes deceiving them. Contradictions pile up and parts of the puzzle seem to fade while others come to the fore. We learn of some of the past of Coopers and some of the nuns who lived there when it was a convent and what happened to at least one of them. We meet Penney, the one time leader of the club, now apparently comatose and cared for tenderly by her husband. And slowly and fascinatingly, and with the usual number of twists the story eventually is unraveled.

I will not be a Spoiler by saying more about the plot but I have a lot more to say about the book. First of all, I loved it. I could tell from the first page that I was in the hands of a master who knew what he was doing. It took a little longer, but it soon occurred to me that he is not only a mystery master, he is an out and out superb writer, capable of fitting words and phrases together in a way that thoroughly engages the reader and keeps them interested in the characters. And he also, speaking of them, is a master creator of characters, people that are good(many)and evil(a few), some of whom have done terrible things and come to regrets and who have lived lives of silence about many things.

And here is where I differ slightly(but not in my overall love of the book)with many of the people whose opinions I have read on line. There are both critics and amateur individual readers among them. I would say the approval rate was somewhere in the area of 98% with practically no one giving TMC a negative review. But I differ on their attitudes to the author and the tone of the book. Most of them seem to treat it as a “cozy” or a comic-mystery. I would reject both terms, but neither of them is entirely wrong.

It is cozy in that it takes place in a sheltered and mostly(obviously not completely)secure community. It is cozy in that the great majority of the characters are “nice” in a way that gets the job done without disgusting the more cynical. It is “cozy” in the sense that to some extent all will come out right. But it is not cozy in overdoing the comforts. Not everyone gets just treatment. Some of the violence, present and past, is terrible. Some of the characters carry awful guilt with them, sometimes for decades. Some of the characters’ thoughts are very bleak though not usually spoken.

As to it’s being a comic-mystery–this is closer to the truth than calling it “cozy.” Actually much of it is funny, some just about to the point of hilarity. The conversations of the Club are often amusing and entertaining, a sort of British, 21st century version of the old NY Round Table. Their use of words, phrasing and other such opportunities of our language often are taken advantage of to the full. Likewise, the witty combination of people in their 70’s and 80’s actually is not only bracing for those of us of a certain age, it is also part of the fun. Donna and Chris are not stupid, but they never seem quite up to the TMC folks,

Now–a number of the other reviewers did note that the book has its serious side. None of them developed this fully in my opinion, but several noted it. This is true and this is why I wouldn’t advertise(in any sense of the term)it as a comedy-mystery. Along with the fun of being around a group of witty, inquisitive interesting people, you cannot miss that you are still among older people These are people who have lived most of their lives in the chronological sense for sure and likely in the experience sense also-at least most of them. They are mostly still full people, capable of full human emotions and actions, but there is an awareness among them–an awareness that life will not go in indefinitely, that everyone’s life has limits, and that they are as vulnerable as many others of their age. This is sometimes commented upon more or less obliquely. There is no “Oh, everything was so much better then” stuff– to my great delight. There is no “Time turn back in they ever “–uh, whatever the rest of the quote is.

There is, however, a serious recognition of time and its limits. There is a serious understanding of how significant these can be. And there is a sadness in this that comes through quite clearly though it is never elucidated in so many words or really in many words at all. One reviewer did comment that they were deeply moved by the ending of the book and so was I. I can’t really see how you could miss. And hats of to Mr Osman for doing this so well and for moving us to tears and laughter, if not at the same time, at least sometimes in the same chapter or close to it.

I hope my words have made you want to read this book. I found it both moving and funny and, oh , yes, a ripping good mystery which if you go back and check(as I sort of did)at the end, I believe you’ll find ties up loose ends, at least the important ones. It is the best mystery I have read in a long time and it stands with with Lawrence Block’s “When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes” as one of the best books I’ve ever read that is also a mystery. So look on line or check your library or whatever,–don’t miss this one. I’ll bet it will whet your appetite, as it has mine, for Osman’s three successor books. I can hardly wait to see what the TMC get into next!