Book Summary of The Thursday Murder Club Book One

Check out my summary of The Thursday Murder Club, a cozy murder mystery set at a retirement home. This is the first book in The Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman and his debut novel. At Coopers Chase retirement village, we start out story where four unlikely friends solve cold case murders that quickly turn into real, present day murders. 

This is a summary of the main points meant to be a refresher before you read my full book review. If you haven’t read the whole book yet, you’ll miss a lot of the small details that make for a great murder mystery. It’s also a good refresher before the movie comes out. 

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Part 1

Chapters 1-4

At the peaceful retirement village, Coopers Chase, Elizabeth is asking Joyce, a retired nurse, a hypothetical question about a girl being stabbed followed by an invite to join Elizabeth on Thursdays. At Coopers Chase to give a speech on security, PC Donna De Freitas is invited to lunch with Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim who call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce writes in her diary about how the club was founded by Elizabeth and Penny (now in the nursing home), a former police detective, who would try to discuss old unsolved murders. 

Chapters 5-10

Ian Ventham, the owner of Coopers Chase, asks his handyman Bogden to replace Tony Curran after Ian fires Tony. Later at a meeting about a new development at Coopers Chase, Ron yells at Ian about ripping up trees and a graveyard while Father Matthew Mackie shows up in the back. 

After the meeting, Ron, his son Jason, and Joyce see Ian and Tony in an argument. Back at home that evening, Tony, a former drug dealer, plans to kill Ian when someone attacks him.

Chapters 11-17

The news of Tony’s murder reaches Coopers Chase, and the Thursday Murder Club members decide to get to the bottom of it. Joyce and Elizabeth go to the local police station to see Donna De Freitas. At the station, DCI Chris Hudson is reviewing Tony’s case, especially a mysterious photograph left on the table of Tony, another drug dealer, and Ron’s son Jason Ritchie. 

Chapters 18-22

Elizabeth and Joyce convince Donna to help them with information in exchange for getting on the Tony case as she wants to become a detective. At the same time, Chris goes to meet with Ron and Ibrahim about the fight, but Ron pretends to be much older and worse off, insisting he’ll only be comfortable talking to a woman. Father Mackie visits Ian at home to implore him not to move the cemetery for his new building, but Ian refuses.

Chapters 23-30

Elizabeth acquires a copy of Ian’s financial documents, and, with Joyce, brings it to Joyce’s daughter Joanna to analyze. Meanwhile, Chris and Donna visit Ian who lies to them about what him and Tony were arguing about. Then, Chris and Donna visit the Thursday Murder Club.

The members of the club purposely make Chris uncomfortable so he’ll share information. And in return they give them what they found on Ian’s financials, including that Ian is set to profit 12 million pounds from Tony’s death. 

Chapters 31-38

Ron’s son Jason joins the group, but tells the detectives that he’s never met Tony. Another resident tells Elizabeth he saw Ian’s car leaving the community around 3 o’clock, thirty minutes before Tony was murdered. 

Chapters 39-48

The Murder Club makes the drive themselves to Tony’s house and determine that, while it would have been close, Ian could have made it on time for the murder. One morning, Ian has the diggers come in very early to start the work on the cemetery. The residents of Coopers Chase find out and sit in chairs in front of the gates to the cemetery while Ian calls the police on them. 

Chapters 49-53

At the same time, Bogdan starts digging in the cemetery with a shovel but stops when he finds bones not in a coffin. Father Mackie shows up, but Ian starts shouting and knocks him over. Chris pulls Ian away and tells him to go home, but as he’s walking away, Ian collapses dead. 

Part 2

Chapters 54-62

At the police station, Chris tells his team that Ian was murdered by fentanyl infection into his upper arm shortly before he collapsed. Elizabeth also got this information somehow and shared it with the Club who’s making a list of everyone who was close enough to Ian. Chris and Donna see Jason’s car on security cameras near Tony’s house at the time of the murder and find Jason called Tony that morning, but when questioned Jason denies everything.

Chapters 63-68

Having had a nice conversation with Elizabeth in cemetery the day before, Bogdan shows up at her door asking for her help. He shows her the bones in the grave he found because he doesn’t know who else to tell. Jason goes to his dad because someone sent him the same picture that was with Tony when he was killed. 

Chapters 69-71

Chris and Donna bring in Father Mackie for questioning after finding out he’s a retired doctor pretending to be a priest, but he doesn’t give them any information before leaving the interview. Ron and Jason tell the rest of the murder club about how Jason stopped at Tony’s the day of the murder to confront Tony about the picture that came in the mail. Elizabeth promises to find the third man in the photo and the man who took it even though they’re both missing. 

Chapters 72-79

Along with Bogdan and the murder club, Elizabeth brings in an expert friend, Austin, to the graveyard to show them all the bones Bogdan found. Austin tells them that the bones are a male who’s been buried for about 50 years. The next day, the murder club also tells Donna and Chris about the bones and Jason, and, while the detectives are mad at first, they agree not to arrest them and to share information.

Chapters 80-84

Elizabeth and Joyce go to visit a florist, who turns out to be Bobby Tanner, the third man from the photograph who Elizabeth miraculously found when the police couldn’t. Bobby (now Peter) has an alibi for the murder, so he agrees to tell the police his story as well as the fact that the man taking the picture, Turkish Gianni, stole a lot of money from Tony before Gianni disappeared. Meanwhile, Ron and Ibrahim confront another resident, Bernard (who sometimes hangs out with Joyce) about sitting on a bench outside the cemetery everyday, but Bernard keeps to his story that it’s just grief over his late wife. 

Chapters 85-90

After telling the police officers their story, Jason and Bobby meet an old acquaintance, Steve, who would also know Gianni. Bernard leaves a letter on Joyce’s door telling her that he secretly buried his wife’s ashes under the bench outside the cemetery (that’s why he sits there), and has now killed himself from the grief. The murder club also finds out that the retirement community was sold to a company called Bramley Holdings.

Chapters 91-95

The murder club visits Gordon, who owns the land next to Coopers Chase, who saw Ian the morning he was killed because Ian had come to (unsuccessfully) convince him to sell his land again. Gordon tells them while he hated Ian, he did sell his land to Bramley Holdings, and he lets them see his photographs from the time the bones were buried. After seeing him in an old photograph, Elizabeth asks “Father” Mackie if he can come to the chapel at Cooper Chase for a confession which he agrees to.

Chapters 96-101

Father Mackie admits to Elizabeth, and later the police, that he wants to save the cemetery because in the 70s when he was a priest, he had a secret affair with a nun who ended up pregnant. After the nun killed herself, she was buried in the cemetery, and all record of Father Mackie being a priest were destroyed to cover up the affair. But he insists he never killed anyone then or now, including Ian. 

Chapters 102-109

Jason tells the group that the friend, Steve, confirmed that Gianni came back into town around the time of the murder. Then, Gordon’s daughter, Karen Playfair, recognizes a picture of John, a resident, retired vet, and husband of Elizabeth’s friend Penny, as being around in the seventies when the bones were buried. 

When they confront John, he admits that when she lost her memory, Penny told him she killed a man who got away with murdering his girlfriend from her case as a police officer and buried him in the cemetery. Then, John killed Ian so no one would dig up the body in the cemetery. 

Chapters 110-115

The murder club gives John one last night with Penny before alerting the police, and both John and Penny die ‘peacefully in their sleep’. Bogdan has taken to playing chess with Elizabeth’s husband Stephen who has dementia, and Bogdan admits he’s the one who killed Tony. Because of the dementia, Stephen never tells anyone, even Elizabeth (as far as we know).

Back in his drug dealing days, Tony and Gianni killed Bogdan’s best friend who was a taxi driver that witnessed Tony murder someone else. Bogdan and Steve killed Gianni right away and made it look like Gianni had disappeared. After hearing the fight between Tony and Ian, Bogdan took this as his chance to get revenge on Tony but make it look like someone else.

Later, Joyce finds out that Bramley Holdings who bought Coopers Chase is part a company her daughter Joanna works for. Joanna saw the potential when she went over Ian’s financials, and wanted her mom to always be able to stay there. The company also promised never to move the cemetery. 

Read the Full Book Review

Now that you’re reminded of the main points of the book, read my full book review. Then, you can read the next book in the series, The Man Who Died Twice. You can also find the book here if you need it.