Jessica Harper Uncanceled

Richard Osman’s hit series charms millions — but are the club really detecting? A closer look reveals secrets, confessions, and police help driving the mysteries.

Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club novels have become one of the biggest hits in modern crime fiction, blending cozy mystery conventions with humor and poignancy. With the newest installment, The Impossible Fortune, due out in just two days (September 25), it’s a good moment to reflect on how the series actually works.

Because there’s an interesting question lurking in the background: how much actual detection do Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron really perform? Do they solve murders in the classic style of Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple, piecing together tiny physical clues and making leaps of deduction?

Think of Holmes in Silver Blaze, noticing a spent match and a stub of candle in the mud, and realising the trainer was trying to examine the horse’s leg in secret before being fatally kicked. Or Poirot in Evil Under the Sun, catching the faint scent of perfume at the crime scene.

These are the small, sensory or logical hinges – footprints and fingerprints, yes, but also a scent, a misspelling, or a disguised voice – on which classic detection often turns.

Looking across the four novels, a pattern emerges. The club are terrific at talking to people, building relationships, and gently (or not so gently) nudging others into revealing their secrets. What they don’t often do is use observation, inference, or their five senses to uncover subtle truths. Instead, Osman advances his plots through confession, coincidence, or official help from the police.

Book One: The Thursday Murder Club
In the series debut, the group investigate the murder of a property developer and the long-buried case of a skeleton under the cemetery. The big revelations don’t come from Elizabeth spotting a stray clue or Joyce noticing a subtle inconsistency.

Instead, suspects confess or reveal things when pressed. Much of the legwork is provided by the police – Chris and Donna are unusually willing to hand over case files and even invite the retirees to pore over witness statements. The final solution relies less on deduction than on characters telling their stories when confronted.

Book Two: The Man Who Died Twice
The sequel brings in Elizabeth’s past life in intelligence. Again, rather than a trail of clues leading to the solution, information arrives in parcels. Elizabeth’s old contact supplies background, the villains blunder into view, and confessions fall out under pressure.

The club do some clever coordinating – organizing meetings, tracking people down, making the right phone calls – but the mystery is rarely solved by classical inference. Even the subplot about stolen diamonds depends on people volunteering information or being maneuvered into revealing it, rather than the club deducing their location from tiny sensory or logical details.

Book Three: The Bullet That Missed
Here the club tackle the supposed murder of a television presenter. Once again, the key movements of the plot don’t hinge on sleuthing in the Holmesian sense. The “victim” turns out to have faked her death — a revelation that emerges from testimony rather than deduction.

The club are at their best when interrogating, charming, or bluffing their way into answers. Ibrahim’s cautious questioning style, Joyce’s diary-like narration, and Elizabeth’s ability to intimidate all serve as levers to open people up. But the case doesn’t depend on noticing a perfume, a changed accent, or a smudge of ink — instead, the truth gradually unfolds because people choose to tell them.

Book Four: The Last Devil to Die
The retirees are again at the heart of events, but the mechanics are similar: the police provide access to documents, gangsters explain themselves under pressure, and suspects are eventually unmasked through confession or confrontation.

So What Does This Mean?
Osman’s sleuths are not classic detectives in the Marple or Holmes mold. They don’t scrutinize cigar ash, catch a forged note by its spelling, or identify a culprit by the trace of a distinctive scent; their real strength is social: they get people talking.

They are non-threatening, disarming, or in Elizabeth’s case, terrifyingly direct. The novels succeed not because the Club out-deduce everyone else, but because they create situations where secrets come spilling out.

That is not a flaw — it’s part of the charm. Osman isn’t writing puzzles for the armchair logician; he’s writing character-driven mysteries where warmth, wit, and human connection matter more than pipe-smoke deduction. But for readers who love classical detection, it’s worth noticing: in these enormously popular books, the mystery is solved less by clues than by conversations.

And perhaps that’s a gentle reminder to me, too: my own Jessica Harper mysteries can always work a little harder at detection in the truest, classic sense.