More of the Thursday Murder Club

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman.
Published 2021,

The Thursday Murder Club is an informal organization of several friends who live in a retirement community in an idyllic area of England. I met them in Richard Osman's first novel, The Thursday Murder Club, which I reviewed last year. The new novel, The Man Who Died Twice, is also very amusing, suspenseful, full of great surprises, and characterized by a rather remarkable body count, mainly -- but not solely -- bad guys. 

The sequel centers around two cases: one being investigated by two police detectives named Chris and Donna, and the other involving "spies" -- that is, members of MI5 and MI6, the British secret services that we all know from watching James Bond and other relevant movies. Both cases proceed with help from the members of the Club.

I'll skip directly to the perceptive way that the author uses food to define his characters. For example,  one of the spies was described as "a small woman with a nose ring and an Ottolenghi cookbook." (p. 95). 

Joyce, one of the retirees, is important in both novels. Passages from her diary, interspersed with the novel's third-person narrative, give a lot of clues about the action. Sometimes she doesn't quite know what is going on, but sometimes her observations are critical to the plot. Joyce provides constant cups of tea to herself and others. One time, as she is getting ready to entertain a woman whom she hasn't met before, she writes: "I have no idea what she likes, and I couldn’t find a place in our conversation to ask her. So I’m playing it very safe with a Victoria sponge, some brownies with no nuts, and a coconut and raspberry slice in case she’s adventurous." (p. 102).

A Victoria Sponge by Paul Hollywood of the Great British Baking Show.
This is one of many TV programs mentioned in the novel (source).

Chocolate comes up a lot. Joyce buys chocolate to bring to her friend Ibrahim but something always goes wrong. Joyce was bringing him a candy bar, but she fails: "I can’t tell you how tempted I am to have some of this Dairy Milk. I know Ibrahim will let me have some as soon as I hand it over, but you know what it’s like when’s it’s just staring you straight in the face? I should have bought him grapes, then I wouldn’t have been tempted. I will have a bit of the chocolate now. Don’t you think? I’ll just nip up to the shop and buy him a new one before the taxi arrives. Then everyone’s happy, aren’t they?" (p. 50). 

And there's Joyce's trip on the Eurostar to Belgium: "We had to head back to the station but, on the way, I bought some chocolate for Ibrahim and some beer for Ron. The shop even wrapped them nicely. ... It was quite a long journey back, so somewhere in northern France I unwrapped Ibrahim’s chocolates and we ate them, and then I unwrapped Ron’s beers and we drank them." (p. 274). 

The policeman Chris works with his colleague Donna, whose health-conscious mother he has just started seeing romantically: "Stakeouts with Chris Hudson used to be more fun. There would be crisps, there would be quizzes, there would be gossip about the new DS who’d just started at Fairhaven and had accidentally sent a picture of his penis to a local shopkeeper who was asking for advice on security grilles. They’d laugh, they’d eat, they’d put the world to rights. But now? Sitting in Chris’s Ford Focus on a late-autumn evening, keeping a watchful eye on Connie Johnson’s lockup? Now Chris has a Tupperware container filled with olives, carrot batons, and hummus. The Tupperware container bought by her mum, the hummus made by her mum, and the carrot batons sliced by her mum." (pp. 12-13).

This continues as Chris sees more of Donna's mother: "He is pretending to eat healthily, which, after a couple of days, he realizes is the same as actually eating healthily. An apple is an apple whether you are eating it because you like to take care of yourself or you are eating it to impress a new girlfriend. The nutrients are the same. Chris hasn’t had a Snickers since Monday." (p. 127).

And much later: "Chris Hudson munches on a carrot baton. When you got used to them they actually weren’t so bad. Well, they were, but it seemed to matter less. ... A man voluntarily eating carrot batons. That really was someone to be." (p. 323-324)). 

The two Murder Club novels are very fun to read! I suspect that there will be more of them in the future.

Review © 2022 mae sander.