Today I’m delighted to be one of the bloggers on the audiobook blog tour for The Thursday Murder Club. My post is written with thanks to Chloe Rose who invited me on the tour and provided my copy of the book.

Blurb:

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

Review:

I am a big fan of Richard Osman’s work, so I was really excited to be given the opportunity to listen to his debut novel to see whether his talents would stretch to writing. It seems that they do, as I loved his writing style. It’s gentle with a healthy dose of British humour that meant that a smile rarely left my face as I was listening.

It is the characters in The Thursday Murder Club that are the star of this show. Although it seemed at first that there would be little for me to relate to in these geriatric detectives, I quickly grew to love them and their foibles, wanting to become involved in their lives in the retirement village. This is enhanced by the entries from Joyce’s diary which allow us to see events from her point of view. However, it is not just the older people who gave me reason to enjoy this novel. The police officers working the case, Chris and Donna, are also well developed and I was able to warm to them too.

The Thursday Murder Club may not be the gory novel I would usually read, but nevertheless it is very well plotted and it kept me intrigued throughout as I wondered who was responsible for the crime. There are a few twists as the mystery is resolved and this meant the ending was not the simple ending I had predicted, but rather a poignant one which left me with some things to think about.

The audio version of The Thursday Murder Club is narrated by Lesley Manville. I love her work and she narrates the novel as brilliantly as I thought she would. She adds inflection and expression in all the right places so that she can bring Osman’s wonderful characters to life.

The Thursday Murder Club is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: