The Thursday Murder Club strikes again

 Richard Osman says idea to set his Thursday Murder Club mysteries in a retirement village caught off guard as it came to him on a what he thought would be a perfectly pleasant but uneventful lunch visiting to a friend of his mother in one such community. (He also denies that the character Joyce is modeled on his mother.)

"The setting felt familiar because you're in beautiful countryside, but I was surprised because it was really busy with people everywhere. Then, when you start talking to them, 70 and above, you think, 'My god, there's some talent, wit, wisdom and sense of mischief in this generation, everything is there'. I thought this would be a great setting for a murder story. Let's throw the worst at them and see how they deal with it." 

He says seniors make good detectives because younger people tend to ignore them or not take them seriously. They have a wealth of experience to draw on; they’ve seen everything and done everything at least once if not more. So he created four feisty seniors who, to entertain themselves, begin to look into local cold cases and become entangled in current murders.

The four main characters he’s created have different backgrounds, personalities, and abilities and their skills compliment one another. Joyce is a former nurse. Ibrahim is a retired psychiatrist. Elizabeth was an agent in England’s intelligence service. And Ron is a former labor organizer. During their working lives they would not have become friends. Finding themselves together in a senior development they have become close. 

Osman has now written four mysteries involving the four, each mystery giving one of the four a leading role. I reviewed the first in December 2021. All have been best sellers in the UK and the US, and a movie starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley is in the works.

Osman began his career working as executive producer on British game shows, including Deal or No Deal. He was the creative director at TV company Endemol UK, pitching the idea for Pointless to the BBC. In 1999, created and wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Boyz Unlimited with David Williams and Matt Lucas. In 2005, he co-created and co-wrote the animated Channel 4 sitcom Bromwell High. In 2013, he created the short-lived ITV gameshow Prize Island

While you do not have to read the four books in order to enjoy them, and while one might argue that the first in the series, The Thursday Murder Club, is a little clunky as Osman was getting his bearings, they are all thoroughly entertaining.