The Thursday Murder Club

I enjoyed this story. There are twists and turns at every stage, but the narrative style enables it to be followed easily. The narration is superb and undoubtedly contributes significantly to my enjoyment of the story.

The characters are sympathetically drawn and the scenes at the bedside and the discussions of age that run throughout, are realistic and moving. The protagonists are an interesting group; that consists of a nurse, a psychiatrist, a trade union leader and probably a former intelligence operative. The mystery surrounding Elisabeth’s former occupation is one of the successful attention retaining devices employed by the author.

The competition between the group and the police to solve the murders is fascinating if perhaps implausible and it would be nice to think that the regular police force would perform more creditably on real life cases. Elisabeth is a character drawn from the world of John Le Carré and the book needs her, since Ron and Ibrahim are both a little one dimensional. She dominates the police and Murder Club investigations and drags the police along in her wake. The diarist Joyce, who reveals some of the story as it unfolds is a little low key at the beginning, but by the end you realise she is a decent match for Elisabeth and through her diary we learn about many facets of her life and of the other characters including the police investigators Donna and Chris.

There is certainly sufficient scope for a follow up story, since Osman is a natural storyteller and I would be very happy to listen to/ read it.

I laughed out loud & I also wept. What more could you want from a book? I'm late to this particular party, but I can see why people liked this book. On the other hand, I do know at least one person who hated it and tbh I can understand that view, even if I don't share it. The style is quite particular & I can see it might not be for everyone.
The plot kept me guessing but works out very nicely.
If I have a criticism, it would be purely practical: this does not need to be a 115 chapter book. I realise it's been done to differentiate the various points of view, but I think they'd be clear enough in bigger chunks.

The narration is excellent. Lesley Manville would have been an excellent cast member for the movie adaptation, though of course she's not old enough!

Very enjoyable.

Very enjoyable, could not stop listening.

Really didn't enjoy this at all. All the publicity around these books is just hype, poor story line, very poor characters and hopeless pace. Don't bother 😡😡😡