The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
The Dream of Success Radio 4
The love affair with Scandi Noir is over, finished, dead as a murdered Dane lying down a well in a vast snowy wilderness.
No, given the bleak vista out the window, we’ve switched to cosy murder.
Think Agatha Christie, think Death in Paradise … yes, there’s a mystery to solve, there might even be a body with a harpoon sticking out of his chest, but hey, the sun is setting on the beach and the detectives are wearing sexy shorts.
On the radio, Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club is cosy murder.
Cooper’s Chase is a luxury retirement home, the kind where the Waitrose delivery vans clink with red wine and repeat prescriptions every time they pass over the security grid.
As a book read on the radio, it offers a smile and a mystery to solve.
It is also a slap in the face to ageism.
The Thursday Murder Club is a group of friends who meet in the Jigsaw Room on a Thursday.
They’re scheduled between Art History and Conversational French and go under the name Japanese Opera which ensures that everybody else stays well away.
Except for Ron who isn’t falling for that and whose strength is that he never believes a word anyone tells him.
Into the institutionalised world of the care village – “It must have been a Monday because it was shepherd’s pie,” muses one of the characters – come an intrepid band of sleuths whose story is told with real tongue in cheek humour.
The villains are men like the owner who parks in the disabled space even though he isn’t and who sees everyone over 60 as a future customer.
Osman is better known as the host of quiz show Pointless. He was surprised by how his novel turned best seller, delighted too.
But then, the fairy story of following your dream and writing a bestseller is one that we all love.
Arts journalist Rosie Millard teased out the reality behind the fairy tale in Dream of Success.
Writer Debbie Bayne is over 60 and yet to be published.
She enjoyed a good career as a management consultant travelling all over the country. But to her, writing seemed softer, gentler, more fun.
Everyone knows how difficult it can be.
J K Rowling was rejected by lots of publishers before Bloomsbury took up Harry Potter.
Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain was rejected over 30 times before he got a publisher. Then he won the Booker Prize.
But it’s not like that for everyone and this was sobering radio.
There have been points where Debbie might have given up but she’s following her dream.
