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Oct. 16th, 2021 11:15 pmI picked up The Thursday Murder Club after seeing ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lizbee's post about it -- it's a very charming mystery novel about a wacky band of quirky pensioners who've made a hobby of puzzleboxing out cold cases and are thoroughly delighted when a real live local murder turns up adjacent to their retirement community.
The Thursday Murder Club includes a sum total of four quirky pensioners, but Joyce and Elizabeth are by far the most protagonist-y and their buddy comedy takes up the most page space of the book: Elizabeth is a Force of Nature whose Dark Past is technically shrouded by the Official Secrets Act but certainly involves A Lot Of Useful Skills and Contacts, while sweet and practical retired nurse Joyce is really just truly delighted to be here* and doing something so interesting!
*'here' being 'lying to the police', 'helping to organize a protest,' 'tracking down a gang member in hiding,' or indeed wherever Elizabeth has decided they are going today
Belligerent former union agitator 'Red' Ron and sophisticated elderly psychologist Ibrahim Arif round out the gang and are also a very cute buddy comedy themselves, though they get much less pagetime than Elizabeth and Joyce. The group -- but especially Elizabeth -- are also to a degree haunted (not literally) by the living ghost of Penny, Elizabeth's best friend and Thursday Murder Club founder, who at the beginning of this book has already entered into the catatonia of late-stage dementia.
In fact the book as a whole is also to a large degree haunted by the specter of aging ungracefully, and the threat of losing one's friends and oneself to time, increasingly imminent for all the protagonists, and impossible to fend off forever. Like, I do want to be clear, the book is like a solid 75% Hijinks and Quirky Pensioners Having A Wonderful Time Fighting (And/Or Committing) Crime, but the retirement community also encompasses a large range of dead spouses, another spouse with early Alzheimer's, and at least two suicides over the course of the book. All of which gives the story plenty of depth to sound, and sort of highlights the highs for the Murder Club by giving us a glimpse of the shadows of the lows, but it is something to be aware of going in.
Aside from the Murder Club, the other protagonists are a pair of new-partner cops that the Murder Club befriends; the Murder Club of course constantly getting one over on them but it's All In Good Fun, because this is the sort of detective book where cops are generally Our Friends Who Sometimes Get In Our Way And Must Be Kept Out Of Things For Their Own Good rather than anything more nuanced or critical. Which is part for the course for the genre and I would not have expected anything different, but I do wish so much of that friendship between the Cool Young Cop and her Tired Older Cop Mentor had not been expressed through the young cop firmly encouraging the older cop to Exercise And Get In Shape -- the mild fatphobia is my biggest actual complaint about the book, but it's a small one in the scheme of things.
lizbee's post about it -- it's a very charming mystery novel about a wacky band of quirky pensioners who've made a hobby of puzzleboxing out cold cases and are thoroughly delighted when a real live local murder turns up adjacent to their retirement community.The Thursday Murder Club includes a sum total of four quirky pensioners, but Joyce and Elizabeth are by far the most protagonist-y and their buddy comedy takes up the most page space of the book: Elizabeth is a Force of Nature whose Dark Past is technically shrouded by the Official Secrets Act but certainly involves A Lot Of Useful Skills and Contacts, while sweet and practical retired nurse Joyce is really just truly delighted to be here* and doing something so interesting!
*'here' being 'lying to the police', 'helping to organize a protest,' 'tracking down a gang member in hiding,' or indeed wherever Elizabeth has decided they are going today
Belligerent former union agitator 'Red' Ron and sophisticated elderly psychologist Ibrahim Arif round out the gang and are also a very cute buddy comedy themselves, though they get much less pagetime than Elizabeth and Joyce. The group -- but especially Elizabeth -- are also to a degree haunted (not literally) by the living ghost of Penny, Elizabeth's best friend and Thursday Murder Club founder, who at the beginning of this book has already entered into the catatonia of late-stage dementia.
In fact the book as a whole is also to a large degree haunted by the specter of aging ungracefully, and the threat of losing one's friends and oneself to time, increasingly imminent for all the protagonists, and impossible to fend off forever. Like, I do want to be clear, the book is like a solid 75% Hijinks and Quirky Pensioners Having A Wonderful Time Fighting (And/Or Committing) Crime, but the retirement community also encompasses a large range of dead spouses, another spouse with early Alzheimer's, and at least two suicides over the course of the book. All of which gives the story plenty of depth to sound, and sort of highlights the highs for the Murder Club by giving us a glimpse of the shadows of the lows, but it is something to be aware of going in.
Aside from the Murder Club, the other protagonists are a pair of new-partner cops that the Murder Club befriends; the Murder Club of course constantly getting one over on them but it's All In Good Fun, because this is the sort of detective book where cops are generally Our Friends Who Sometimes Get In Our Way And Must Be Kept Out Of Things For Their Own Good rather than anything more nuanced or critical. Which is part for the course for the genre and I would not have expected anything different, but I do wish so much of that friendship between the Cool Young Cop and her Tired Older Cop Mentor had not been expressed through the young cop firmly encouraging the older cop to Exercise And Get In Shape -- the mild fatphobia is my biggest actual complaint about the book, but it's a small one in the scheme of things.
