The Thursday Murder Club is essentially about a group of elderly people who get together to try and solve unsolved crimes, but get tangled up in a more recent case when someone is murdered in their community. It's really hard for me to sum up how I feel about this book, mainly because I find its strengths and weaknesses to largely be the same. For this reason, I'm going to deviate from my normal review format and make a list of talking points:
1. Characters-I really liked the characters of this book and I think its one of the features that is a definite strength. At first a lot of them blended together but as the story went on, I really grew attached and began to appreciate them. They are definitely the heart of the story and they're the main reason I would read more in this series.
2. Writing-Overall, I think I did like the writing of this book. I have several features I will talk about in more detail but the writing style itself was enjoyable and reasonably engaging. The plot was less so and I didn't really care for the mystery which was a bit of a shame. I just can't get very invested in criminal organisations and financial scandals, and I wish the mystery had had more of a personal element as the characters were the best part of the book and it would have been a much stronger drive in my opinion.
3. Punchlines-Speaking of writing, this book had a very weird feature whereby a 'punchline' would occur in the middle of a paragraph. For example, at one point the young female detective is on a date she isn't enjoying. You get a long list of reasons why the man is awful, and then a sentence begins with (paraphrased) 'she got out of his bed and got dressed', implying she slept with him anyway. I assume this was done for humour but it doesn't occur at the end of a scene or paragraph, but is instead just dropped in the middle. This happens a lot and sometimes it seems like it might be trying to be character development, but these punchlines were rarely brought up again and they just fell a bit flat for me. They could have been good ways to end scenes but in the middle of them, they just felt distracting.
4. Names-This is the thing that annoyed me the most about the whole book. Every single character will constantly end a sentence with the name of the person they are speaking to. For example:
A: Did you see the body B?
B: Yes I did A
A: Awful isn't it B?
Etc. My partner suggested this was to replicate how older people talk but I swear the younger characters did it too and I just found it incredibly annoying. I eventually got used to it but it was very distracting at first.
5. Ending-Highlight for spoilers. So at the end of the book, we have three bodies. These three bodies have all been murdered by different people. Two other people also pretend to have killed one of the bodies and confess to it. The problem is that all of these reveals follow each other (in different scenes but presented narratively after each other) which makes for an exhausting experience. I have already said I struggled to care about the mystery but I genuinely switched off by the third confession and had lost all interest in what actually happened. This section I do feel could have worked and was let down by bad writing/plotting/execution.
Overall, this review might appear quite negative but I do actually have fond memories of this book. I would definitely read more of these characters and I think it has real promise as a series, I just wish some little niggles could be ironed out. With a strong mystery plot though, this book would 100% be one of my favourites. It's a shame this one fell a bit flat but I am cautiously optimistic for more.
Overall Rating:
.5
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