Plano Reads: The Marlow Murder Club

Mystery Book Club’s pick for May is The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. Please join us for our discussion on Thursday, May 16 at 7 p.m. at Davis Library or through Zoom. If you would like to attend the meeting virtually, please register here. 

Available in Print | ebook | eAudio

Meet Judith: a seventy-seven-year-old whiskey drinking, crossword puzzle author living her best life in a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Marlow.

Nothing ever happens in Marlow. That is, until Judith hears her neighbor shot while skinny-dipping in the Thames. The local police don’t believe her story. It’s an open and shut case, of course. Ha! Stefan can’t be left for dead like that.

Judith investigates and picks up a crew of sidekicks: Suzie the dogwalker and Becks the vicar’s wife. Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…

Robert Thorogood has turned the Christie-mystery on its head with this ever-so-sly cozy perfect for readers who love Richard Osmond’s Thursday Murder Club and An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good.

-Provided by the publisher

At 77, Mrs. Judith Potts is totally satisfied with her life. She lives in a mansion in Marlow, England, and she skinny-dips at night in the Thames. In fact, she’s swimming when she hears her neighbor Stefan Dunwoody cry out in protest, and then a gunshot. Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik and her team call Stefan’s death a suicide, but with no weapon in sight Judith is convinced it must have been murder. She recruits two other women to her team of amateur sleuths: Becks, the local vicar’s wife, who seems unhappy with her life, and could use an outlet; and dog walker Suzie. While the police fail to find any clues to Stefan’s death, the women of the Marlow Murder Club search for suspects. However, Judith’s plan to identify Stefan’s killer to the police doesn’t work out as expected. VERDICT Fans of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club will like the amateur sleuths introduced in this puzzle from Thorogood (author of the “Death in Paradise” mysteries, which have been turned into a BBC TV series). While avid mystery readers might recognize the twist, the finale and its grand solution are worthy of Agatha Christie.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal.

Robert Thorogood is an English screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as the creator of the internationally acclaimed BBC murder mystery series Death in Paradise, and has written a series of spin-off novels featuring detective DI Richard Poole.

After graduating from Cambridge University, he spent many years supporting his writing career with a variety of temporary jobs, including dressing up in a full bear costume to taunt the then Prime Minister, John Major; being a magician at Hamley’s; and being employed to change the batteries in the remote controls for a minor branch of the Saudi Royal Family.

Thorogood has been an avid fan of murder mysteries since he read his first Agatha Christie novel, Peril at End House, at the age of ten. He released the first book in a new series, The Marlow Murder Club (HarperCollins), in 2020; it received rave reviews and has become an international bestseller. Following the escapades of three unlikely provincial detectives, the novel has been praised as ‘charmingly eccentric whodunit.’ The sequel, Death Comes to Marlow, was published in 2023. There are plans to expand the series with three more titles.

From the Johnson & Alcock Literary Agency

• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Print, ebook, eAudio)
• The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths (Print, ebook)
• The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett (Print, ebook)
• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (Print, ebook, eAudio)
• The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (Print, ebook, eAudio)