I read so many mentions of The Thursday Murder Club being brilliant and hilarious that I began to wonder. For one thing, humor is probably the most subjective form of writing there is. For another, I always get nervous when the hype about any book begins to pile up. I almost changed my mind about reading it but decided to go against my better judgment.

The premise is fantastic. Four old folks who have all their marbles and are able to get out and about with no problem, who meet once a week to solve cold cases. What's not to like? The four-- a nurse, a spy, a psychiatrist, and a professional protester-- all bring their special skills and considerable intellect to the table, and they also get to help educate a detective constable who's new to the area.

There are poignant moments concerning growing old, death, and grief scattered throughout the book; this book is about more than your typical mystery. I did find myself smiling from time to time as I read some witticism, but at a quarter of the way through the book, that sort of humor seemed to vanish. I also didn't feel comfortable with a detective chief inspector working with anyone outside law enforcement so closely. The Thursday Murder Club also suffered from one or two first-timer mistakes. First, the mystery solving seemed to vanish occasionally because the author was so enamored of his characters he forgot about the story and just wanted to spend time with them. Yes, they're interesting characters, but please don't forget why they're there in the first place. Second, I found the mystery confusing. Too many bodies piled up. Too many killers were hauled out of the shadows. Motives were flying around like bats pouring out of a cave at dusk. It takes a lot for me to become confused when reading a mystery, and I have to admit that I lost the plot a few times. I finally got to the point where I was reading just to get it over with, and that's not good.

As much as I wanted to enjoy The Thursday Murder Club, I did not, but since so much of the enjoyment hinges on humor (and as I said before, humor is so subjective), your mileage may definitely vary.

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I was two paragraphs into this book when I knew I was going to love it. And I did. Funny, sometimes moving, sometimes snarky, lots of misdirection, frequent shifts in POV, great characters and a great sense of place. Not a lot of action, it cruises along at a stately pace (kind of like Ibrahim's driving) while you look at some cool scenery and wonder where you're going to end up. I loved the four sleuths and the two detectives. I hear there's another coming out and I've already put it on my list.

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The Thursday Murder Club is four senior citizens who meet in The Jigsaw Room of the Cooper Chase Retirement Center. They discuss unsolved crimes until a local developer is found dead and they find themselves in the middle of their first live case. The club members are charming and likable characters who have great detecting skills and figure things out ahead of the police. I found this book to be very entertaining with clever twists which made the murder hard to solve. I listened to the audio and found the narrator very pleasant to listen to. I'm now looking forward to reading the 2nd book. I loved the short chapters and the witty and sometimes touching dialogue. If you love cozy mysteries, then I think you will enjoy this one.

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This was a good-hearted mystery with charming, realistic characters working together to figure out who has murdered whom and why. I listened to the audio version and it was a delight. I'm so glad to see there will be a sequel!

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I was surprisingly bored for much of the first half; I have admired Osman's wry sense of humor and wit on the British TV show Pointless, but there seemed to be a lack of it in his writing. I found the diary entries a bit tedious, as well. All in all I liked the whole experience, although it's more enjoyable if the victims aren't people who the reader doesn't feel that bad about having been killed.

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I have been persuaded to give this another chance, and ... I really enjoyed it.

Boy, I must have been cranky, a year or so ago, when I announced, imperiously that I did not care who killed Tony Curran.

And, in a way, I think Richard Osman would have been proud of me, because I think the least important thing about this book is the identity of the murderer of Tony Curran. That's NOT a spoiler: there is a good, respectable solution to the murder(s) that an attentive reader could figure out, piecing the clues together. But far more important is a gentle, humorous consideration of the process of getting older: what it is about us that changes, what stays the same. How our social circle adapts to our change circumstances and, a bit like our schooldays, we find ourselves making friends outside our former comfort zone. If we're lucky, accepting the person we really are, after all those years of denying him or her.

Osman is a warm and witty writer, and a good observer of little social signals. I still feel that he sometimes goes for cheap laughs at the expense of his pensioner sleuths and their mates -- Elizabeth would know what a fitbit is, even if she would never be bothered to use one. But, perhaps that's the point -- the residents of Cooper Chase Retirement Community save their little grey cells for the things that matter.

Looking forward to the next ones in the series ...

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