Category: Series - The Thursday Murder Club

THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTUNE by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

11/11/2025

Read by Fiona Shaw
#5 - The Thursday Murder Club

I really love this series. Osman's characters are so vivid and, having spent four books with them, I'm eager for more. It's nice to see how the dynamic changes over time. Strangely, I'm not nostalgic for the old dynamic - I thought I would be annoyed as characters fulfill different roles. I like seeing the secondary characters stepping up to the plate in different ways. The juxtaposition of the family drama against the larger crime is done beautifully. I hope this series continues for quite a few more books.

5/5

Quotes:
- "Elizabeth is always alone now. Always alone and never alone. That was grief."
- "My God, the older we get, the more like children we are."
- "[...] but really, unconditional love has a huge flaw: if you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn't mater. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing. There is no space. So thee only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love to test it and stretch it, to mock it even. And it's not just that. There is a further problem with unconditional love, isn't there, because what if you don't love yourself? What if, like Joanna, you obsess over your flaws and weaknesses, you constantly update the balance sheet of your own personality and find it wanting. Well, then the unconditional love of a parent is a sign that they simply don't know you. If they truly knew you, their love would be peppered with caveats. I love you, but..."

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THE LAST DEVIL TO DIE by Richard Osman (Audiobook

10/27/2025

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Read by Fiona Shaw.
#4 - The Thursday Murder Club

The switch of narrators was a little jarring at first but I love Fiona Shaw as I adore Lesley Manville. The gang is back and there's more murder to solve. I love the way that we get a larger "enemy" in this novel, forcing Donna and Chris further towards the club. We get more of Bogdan, always a pleasure. In this fourth book, it almost feels like the murders take a backseat and let Osman really sink his teeth into the characters themselves. There's such wonderful character development in this novel.

5/5

Quotes:

"And there's the rub. We might see a million white swans and, yet, we are not able to say that all swans are white. Yet, we see just one black swan and we can say with absolute certainty that not all swans are white."
"The pitch looks gorgeous, like an emerald amphitheater. Shame to spoil it with a game of football, but there we are."
"Life is a crisis, isn't it?"
"You understand that these people are still alive. Everyone who dies is alive. We call people 'dead' because we need a word for it but 'dead' just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person. You understand? No one dies. Not really."
"Well, she's no longer present in a time and a space for now. She isn't anywhere or anything."
"It is five to three in the morning. Anyone who has ever worked nights or been kept awake night after night will tell you that three AM to four AM is always the longest hour - the hour when brutal loneliness takes total control. where every tick of the clock is agony."
"She will spend more time there, in that past. She knows that. And as the world races forward, she will fall further and further back. There comes a point when you look at your photograph albums more often than you watch the news, where you opt out of time and let it carry on doing its thing while you get on with yours. You simple stop dancing to the beat of the drum."
"The daffodils are out very early this year. I've seen the daffodils bloom for nearly eighty years now and they are still a miracle to me. To still be here; to see the flowers that so many people won't see, every year, poking their heads up to see who's still around to enjoy the show."

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THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB (Film)

8/29/2025

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I was so excited for adaptation of Richard Osman's book THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB. I had just finished the third book in the series so there were a few muddlings in my brain regarding the first book but I still recalled the general plot. I knew it would be a good adaptation and was it ever! There were a few changes (minor) so the ending left me feeling a little confused for a moment - only because I was trying to remember if certain events had transpired in the book or not. For the most part, this is one of the more faithful adaptations I have ever seen. I wonder if that's because Osman works in film and television as well. It was a great movie with a phenomenal cast. I mean, Helen Mirren as Elizabeth, with Celia Imrie as Joyce, Ben Kingsley as Ibrahim, and Pierce Brosnan as Ron. Just genius casting. Then you throw in Tom Ellis, David Tenant, Richard E. Grant, and Ingrid Oliver (those were the people recognizable to me). The actors who were new to me were wonderful as well. I love seeing good writing come to life and the main quartet...I mean, you couldn't really go wrong with those four, could you? It was remarked that this was a continuation of the movie RED and I have to admit - there's probably world where those two stories intersect (Helen Mirren, after all). Obviously, some storylines from the book were not included to their fullest but that's part of editing, I suppose. It was a delight from start to finish. I recommend reading the book first, of course, but definitely check out the film if you love a murder mystery with a dash of charm, caper, and humor to it.

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THE BULLET THAT MISSED by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

8/23/2025

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Read by Fiona Shaw.
#3 - The Thursday Murder Club

I love this series. It's charming and funny and twisty. Though not suspenseful, it certainly has me eager for the next page. Osman mentions that he likes to write full chapters in one go which is why he keeps them short. I also appreciate how each adventure leads to the next, which is his goal, instead of a Murder, She Wrote situation. Not that there's anything wrong with Murder, She Wrote; just a little suspicious that she always happens to be in the location where a murder occurs. I hear they're rebooting it with Jamie Lee Curtis. Should be interesting, but I'm getting off-track. This third in the series is wonderful and just deepens the relationships between the characters. I love this quartet and the lunatic fringe they encounter. I did work out at least part of this story before the end but certainly not to the extent Osman reveals. I'm excited to see how they do the series on Netflix, though we all know screen adaptations are never as good as the book.

5/5

Quote:

"I just think that you can be very talented and have lovely hair. Perhaps I'm shallow but both of these things are important to me. Claudia Winkleman is a good example."

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THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

6/17/2025

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Read by Lesley Manville.
#2 - The Thursday Murder Club

I am loving this series. Four pensioners who are solving crimes and outsmarting...well, everyone around them. I love that we get more of their backgrounds in this one, not to mention some expanding on the secondary characters. There's so much more humor in this book than one might expect from a mystery novel. It's fun and twisty and still keeps the tension of high stakes. Osman is great at infusing each character with their own distinct idiosyncrasies. I do wonder why he puts in random first-person perspectives from Joyce; I'm not mad at it. Of course, Lesley Manville does a beautiful job with the narration as well. Eager for the next installment.

Quotes:

"The brain was is tremendously clever. One of the reasons Ibrahim likes it so much. Your foot was your foot and would remain your foot through thick and thin, but the brain changes in form and in function."
"Revenge is not a straight line; it's a circle. It's a grenade that goes off while you're still in the room and you can't help but be caught in the blast."
"People love to sleep and, yet, they are so frightened of death."
"I am learning that it is important to stop sometimes and just have a drink and a gossip with friends even as corpses start to pile up around you which they have been doing a lot recently. It's a balancing act, of course, but, by and large, the corpses will still be there in the morning and you mustn't let it spoil your dominoes."

5/5

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THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

3/29/2025

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Read by Lesley Manville.

I waited quite a bit of time for this to become available and it was 100% worth the wait. I've already requested the following books in the series. The idea of pensioners solving crimes is not a new one (Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher), but a quarter such as Joyce, Ron, Elizabeth, and Ibrahim are just a delightful mix of stubborn determination, false senility, humor, and kindness. I really enjoyed this story, not just because of the wonderful character development, but the complexity of the tale itself. Osman's writing is also just captivating, offering many chapters from a third-person limited perspective, focusing upon one character alternating with a first-person perspective from Joyce. As is pointed out in the interview with Richard Osman afterwards, even the "bad" characters are quite human. I can't wait for the next novel in the series (but I'm going to have to because it's well in demand). It's also in works to become a film and I will surely watch and post about it. I just looked up the cast list and it looks phenomenal (Celia Imrie, Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, David Tenant, Tom Ellis, Sarah Niles). It's just missing Emma Thompson. I can't wait.

5/5

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THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTUNE by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

THE LAST DEVIL TO DIE by Richard Osman (Audiobook

THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB (Film)

THE BULLET THAT MISSED by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB by Richard Osman (Audiobook)

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