Thursday Murder Club (series)

Last updated
The Thursday Murder Club
Author Richard Osman
Country United Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Crime fiction, detective fiction, murder mystery, cozy mystery
Publisher Viking Press
Published3 September 2020–present
No. of books5

The Thursday Murder Club is a murder mystery book series by television presenter and author Richard Osman.

Contents

Background

The first instalment, entitled The Thursday Murder Club , was Osman's fiction writing debut, and was published in September 2020. The book received great critical and public acclaim, and was a great financial success, becoming the No. 1 bestselling Christmas title in the UK, a first for a debut novelist. [1] The subsequent entries in the series have been similarly well received, with The Last Devil To Die ending up as No.1 on the New York Times Best Seller list on 8 October 2023 [2] and The Impossible Fortune debuted as No. 1 on the The Sunday Times Bestseller list on 4 October 2025. [3]

Character overview

The titular club consists of four elderly pensioners who reside in Coopers Chase, a retirement village located in the fictional Kent village of Fairhaven. The club was initially formed to merely discuss unsolved cases, but the four invariably come to be involved in investigating actual local murders.

The group consists of former spy Elizabeth Best, ex-union leader Ron Ritchie, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft, her dog, Alan, and psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif. [4]

Supporting characters include Detective Chief Inspector Chris Hudson, Police Constable Donna De Freitas, and handyman Bogdan Jankowski. In 2024, Osman told author Lee Child that Bogdan was inspired by the author's Jack Reacher character.

Books in the series

  1. The Thursday Murder Club (2020)
  2. The Man Who Died Twice (2021)
  3. The Bullet That Missed (2022)
  4. The Last Devil to Die (2023)
  5. The Impossible Fortune (2025)

Adaptations

Film

A film adaptation of the first book was released on Netflix 27 August 2025 via Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, with a script from Katy Brand, and Chris Columbus as director. The film features an ensemble cast led by Helen Mirren as Elizabeth, Pierce Brosnan as Ron, Ben Kingsley as Ibrahim and Celia Imrie as Joyce.

Theatre

On 24 May 2024, Osman announced on the podcast The Rest Is Entertainment that he was working on a Thursday Murder Club stage play with co-writer Tom Basden. As with the film, Steven Spielberg and Amblin will produce. Instead of adapting one of the books, the play will feature an original story. [5]

References

  1. ↑ Flood, Alison (22 December 2020). "Richard Osman becomes first debut author to land Christmas No 1". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 22 December 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2024. UK Top 10 bestsellers, week ending 19 December 2020 / 1. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman 134,514
  2. ↑ "Combined Print & E-Book Fiction". The New York Times. 8 October 2023. Retrieved 8 August 2024.
  3. ↑ "The Sunday Times Bestsellers List — the latest UK book charts". The Sunday Times. October 4, 2025. Archived from the original on October 5, 2025. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
  4. ↑ "Meet the characters from The Thursday Murder Club". Penguin Books Australia. Retrieved August 8, 2024.
  5. ↑ Sayce, Rebecca (23 May 2024). "Richard Osman confirms a Thursday Murder Club theatre production is in the works". Digital Spy .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.