The Thursday Murder Club is an internationally best-selling series by Richard Osman. It centres around a group of ageing residents at the Coopers Chase Retirement Village that meet weekly to discuss unsolved murders. The books have served as a source of great entertainment, but they have also unintentionally become an excellent marketing campaign for retirement villages around the world.
The three novels in Osman’s series thus far are The Thursday Murders Club, The Man Who Died Twice and The Bullet That Missed which is set for release in September of this year. The main characters Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron are all pushing 80 years old and find themselves in a live murder case rather than an outdated one in the first novel.
Murder doesn’t usually provide good public relations, but the books have helped consumers see the benefits of moving into a retirement complex. With Coopers Chase Retirement Village highlighting the care, comfort and luxury that comes with moving in.
Osman’s inspiration for the crime novels came after an extraordinary visit to a retirement village in 2019. He found his visit moving, with residents laughing, gossiping and drinking. Noting the common misconceptions of being in your seventies, Osman was pleasantly surprised. The mix of politics and diverse backgrounds in the complex created an interesting dynamic that he was drawn to and proved to be the perfect location for a murder.
The setting for the series was a way of showing Osman’s interest in the older generation, and how getting old is not a limitation. Despite the murders, the Coopers Chase Retirement Village proves to be a safe and loving environment that encourages readers to look into the benefits of moving into an older community.
Book one, The Thursday Murder Club, is soon to be a major motion picture, produced under Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment and will no doubt provide more great exposure for life in retirement villages.
