57 pages • 1 hour read
Richard OsmanThe Thursday Murder Club
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Book Club Questions
Symbols & Motifs
Photographs
Photographs are a reoccurring motif throughout the story. They are used as the leading pieces of evidence that end up bringing the guilty to justice. The first time that the photographs are used is when one is placed at the scene of Tony’s murder. It shows three men and gives a starting point for the plot to begin forming potential suspects. That same photograph was given to Jason the day of Tony’s murder, which spurred the visit he made to his old friend’s house. The motif reoccurs again when a photograph of Father Matthew is discovered and is used as the proof needed for Elizabeth to get the truth out of him. A photograph is also seen by Karen Playfair in an old newspaper, and it is what leads the group to figuring out that John was the one behind one of the murders.
People are found guilty through photographs or even video recordings like the stills from traffic cameras. It is a motif carried from the beginning, with photographs of the murder Elizabeth was investigating being shown to Joyce in the opening chapters, until the very end when a photograph is what seals John’s fate. Even Joanna, Joyce’s daughter, breaks up with her boyfriend because of photographs that she found on his phone.
Jigsaw Room
The Jigsaw Room is where The Thursday Murder Club usually works on their cases, meeting there weekly, and it is a place they return to several times during the story. If they are unable to, they intentionally give a reason as to why they are meeting outside the room—such as it has been booked that day, or they were working on the case and it was not a Thursday. The name of the room symbolizes what goes on when the group is in there; the name is a play on words about pieces being put together to solve a puzzle.
The group spends their time in there looking at old case files and trying to figure out the guilty parties themselves. Their actions within a room called The Jigsaw Room is what gives the space a symbolic undertone by setting the stage for it to be a place where the big picture of everything comes together.
Fentanyl
Fentanyl appears several times throughout the story that works as a plot device to further the mystery of potential suspects. Fentanyl is initially seen during the murder of Ian, who was killed by someone the morning the residents were protesting the gate. It spurs questions about what person could get access to such a drug while being good enough with needles to give the injection unnoticed. From there, the story looks into Karen Playfair because of her connection to the dark web, and suspicion is created around Matthew who is found to be a doctor with easy access to such a drug. Fentanyl is used to kill more than one person in the story, even though the other victims were not a focus, and it is John, Penny’s husband, who gives insight as to why he chose the method he did.
According to John, Fentanyl is used to put people who are suffering out of their misery, and it is how he justifies committing the murders that he did. At the end of the story, he gives his wife a final dose of the drug, as a sort of assisted suicide, before going home to do the same to himself. By the closing chapters, three characters have been killed off due to fentanyl poisoning.
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By Richard Osman
