The Thursday Murder Club

The narrative opens with retired nurse Joyce Meadowcraft’s diary, discussing when she met fellow retiree Elizabeth Best three months or so ago. Elizabeth questions Joyce about a girl who was stabbed with a knife. She asks Joyce how long it would have taken the victim to bleed to death, and if the woman would have survived longer with someone there with medical training to help save her. Joyce responds that the size of the woman described would “probably die in around forty-five minutes” and “wouldn’t die at all” if she had help (2). Elizabeth then invites Joyce to the Thursday Murder Club, a weekly gathering held at their retirement home, Coopers Chase.

Switching narrative into third-person and out of the diary, Chapter 2 opens with Police Constable (PC) Donna De Freitas, who is sitting with pensioners at the Coopers Chase Retirement Village. She is there to give a talk about safety, but the participants complain that they already know all the basic security measures. Donna is later invited to lunch with Elizabeth, Joyce, and two other retirees: Ron Ritchie and Ibrahim Arif. Donna asks how they all became friends, and after some joking around about it, Joyce explains that they are the “Thursday Murder Club” (6). Coopers Chase Retirement Village was formed ten years prior, when the church sold the land and the first residents began moving in, the requirements being that they be over 65 years old. There is an “old convent dominating” the land, with “three modern residential developments spiraling out” (7), and a “Garden of Eternal Rest” placed up the hill. It is all owned by Ian Ventham and built by “his builder Tony Curran, and his gang” (8).

Joyce’s diary entry opens the fourth chapter, describing her “first meeting of the Thursday Murder Club” in the Jigsaw Room (9). In attendance, there is Elizabeth, Ibrahim, and Ron; however, they are missing Penny Gray because she is now in Willows, the nursing home at Coopers Chase. The group was started by Penny and Elizabeth before Ibrahim—who was a psychiatrist—joined them and then Ron, who invited himself.

In Chapter 5, Ian visits Bogdan Jankowski at a café in Tunbridge Wells. He says that he has a job for Bogdan because he plans to fire Tony, who runs the construction for all of his sites. He wants Bogdan to take Tony’s place, and the man agrees, but he warns Ian that Tony will not be happy with the decision. Tony owns “twenty-five percent of everything that he built at Coopers Chase,” and Ian only agreed to that much because of their close friendship (17). Ian needs Tony off the project he intends to start with the land the cemetery is on. Chapters 6 and 7 change scenes to focus on a conversation between Ron and Ian at the consultation meeting discussing the tearing down of the graveyard and the rebuilding Ian has planned; the residents are not happy about it, and Ron is arguing that the lease says they should have a say in whether or not it goes ahead. Unbeknownst to them, Father Matthew Mackie enters the room in the back.

In Chapter 8, Ron and Joyce are sitting outside having a few beers, and Ron’s son, the famous fighter Jason Ritchie, is introduced. The conversation between the three is paused when they notice Ian and Tony appearing to have a quiet argument by their vehicles, although they are too far to hear anything. In Chapter 9, Ian visits Karen Playfair, the daughter of Gordon Playfair who “owns the farmland at the top of the hill, adjoining Coopers Chase” (24). Ian is trying to get him to sell by offering more and more money; however, Karen says that her father will not budge because he doesn’t like Ian. Chapter 10 opens with Tony deciding that he is “going to kill Ian Ventham” for cutting him out of the deal, but before Tony can do much else, he is bludgeoned in the head by a spanner. The murderer places a “photograph on the worktop” before leaving. (27).