The British author Richard Osman burst onto the mystery book scene in 2020 with The Thursday Murder Club, the first title in what would become a bestselling series. The video production of this novel, now streaming on Netflix, was able to nab big-name stars, who are very well cast: Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, and Pierce Brosnan. Osman’s narrative adapts well to the screen, since it’s heavy on snappy, clever dialogue.
There are four sequels to The Thursday Murder Club novel, and throughout the series, various romances provide side interest. Osman, who is in his fifties, is somehow able to enter the minds of characters who are a generation older than he is. Be warned: you must read all the Thursday Murder Club novels in order; after the first book, Osman doesn’t provide much background to his characters. (A standalone Osman mystery, reviewed below, seems poised to develop into another series.)
How did it all start? As I noted several months ago in my review of The Thursday Murder Club, Osman sets his septuagenarian characters in a posh retirement community, Coopers Chase, in present-day England. Meeting every Thursday to discuss long-abandoned local cold cases are the four leads: a firebrand retired union organizer (Ron), a thoughtful psychiatrist (Ibrahim), a fearless ex-spy (Elizabeth), and a cautious former nurse (Joyce). Each of them is a hoot. When a contractor who has worked on the site where they live is found murdered, the Murder Club jumps into the not-at-all-cold investigation, to the chagrin of the police. The narrative starts out slowly but then rapidly picks up the pace, for a rollicking, witty murder investigation.
In the next book, The Man Who Died Twice (2021), three characters who were introduced in the first book become sort of honorary members of the Murder Club. Bogdan is a construction worker with a shady side but a heart of gold. Donna is an ambitious police constable who has figured out how clever those Coopers Chase retirees are. And Chris, Donna’s boss, is a sad-sack DCI who might finally be finding love. The plot in this novel, suitably complex, involves jewel thieves, the Mafia, Elizabeth’s ex-husband, and MI-6, the British foreign intelligence agency. There are numerous violent murders, but I wouldn’t call the book scary.
In The Bullet That Missed (2022), the Murder Club is examining a decade-old case in which a woman, Bethany Waites, was presumed dead even though her body was never found. The woman was a television journalist, so the Murder Club members find themselves angling to interview various British television personalities. (Note that author Richard Osman is himself a popular British television producer and presenter, so this is his bailiwick.) The club members also have to contend with serious threats against Elizabeth, related to her career with MI-6. Hmmm, is international money laundering somehow linked to the death of Bethany Waites?
The Last Devil To Die (2023) begins with the Murder Club grieving the death of an antiques dealer who is an old friend of Elizabeth’s husband, Stephen. This entry into the Thursday Murder Club series takes readers more deeply into Elizabeth’s marriage, even as the crew contends with powerful drug-smuggling cartels. There’s also an amusing sub-plot about online fraud aimed at the elderly. The body count surrounding the Murder Club activities is, again, quite high, but the tone of this novel remains like the previous ones: cozy, with amateur sleuths and mostly off-stage deaths. Osman doesn’t shy away from including in his story the infirmities of old age, and his treatment of a character with dementia is honest and moving.
As The Impossible Fortune (2025) opens, Joyce is planning the wedding of her only child, Joanna. At the wedding reception, the best man, Nick, confides to Elizabeth that someone has threatened to kill him. The next day, Nick disappears, and the Murder Club is off and running, to solve a mystery that goes deep into the intricacies of cryptocurrency. As usual, each member of the club has a part to play in the solution.
And now for the standalone novel from Richard Osman. We Solve Murders (2024) introduces the characters of Amy Wheeler and her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler. I wouldn’t classify this one as a cozy mystery; it’s rather a thriller that travels the globe, from Britain’s New Forest to the South Carolina coast, from Dubai to Dublin. Amy works as a bodyguard for an international private security firm. Steve is a retired cop who wants nothing more than to pet his cat and take part in a weekly quiz night at the local pub in rural Britain. But when three clients of Amy’s firm are murdered and Amy herself is attacked, she and Steve take off on whirlwind flights to get to the bottom of the crimes. The plot only works because Steve and Amy are able to fly on private jets thanks to wealthy Rosie D’Antonio, a famous author of murder mysteries, whom Amy has been assigned to protect. Rosie is an adventure-seeker, so she tags along and helps with the investigation. I guessed some of the plot, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the story, since Osman’s lively dialogue again drives the narrative.