Books Like The Thursday Murder Club: 10 Cosy Crime Reads to Devour Next

The Thursday Murder Club is a crime novel that people press on friends who do not read crime. Four residents of a Kent retirement village, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim, meet once a week to pick over cold cases, until a murder lands on their doorstep and they get to work on a live one. Richard Osman writes it warm and very funny, with Joyce's diary entries as the heart of the thing, but he is honest about age and loss in a way that catches you off guard, and the plot is far cleverer than the tone lets on. No gore, no sex, a great deal of tea, and a film now too, so the queue for the next one has never been longer.

What makes a good next read is not just a murder and a pensioner. It is the underestimated older sleuth whom nobody takes seriously, the friendships that do the real detecting, the jokes, and the kindness underneath. We looked for all four. Most of these are British and most are the first in a series, so there is more where each came from. A couple travel further afield, one is a spy story in disguise, and one is the 1930 original that all of them owe a debt to.

What to read after The Thursday Murder Club

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

Judith Potts is seventy-seven, sets crosswords for a living, swims in the Thames every day and answers to nobody, and one evening she hears a shot from the garden next door. When the police will not take her seriously she recruits Suzie, a dog walker, and Becks, the vicar's wife, and the three of them get on with it. English, funny and built on exactly the same pleasure as Coopers Chase, friends who should be past it running rings round the professionals; from the creator of Death in Paradise, and the first of a series.