Snooping Out Some Senior Sleuth Mysteries

Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series has been insanely popular, and set to be more so with the release of the TV series with some big-name stars, including Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley and Pierce Brosnan. The show airs late August.

The books show that life need not be dull when you live in a retirement village and follows four residents who enjoy examining cold case crimes for their own amusement. When a real murder happens, you can be sure they’re right on the case. And the cases keep coming, with four books so far and a new one (The Impossible Fortune) for release later this year.

However, Richard Osman isn’t the first novelist to write about elderly sleuths. Agatha Christie’s brainchild, Miss Marple, claimed a deep understanding of the darker side of human nature, all gleaned from the people who crossed her path in the tiny English village of St Mary Mead. In a way, a retirement village could be another St Mary Mead with its assortment of characters thrown together in close proximity. The retired and elderly are often overlooked – the perfect cover for sleuthing and possibly even getting away with murder.

The idea of a “murder club” may well have been Christie’s, whose elderly sleuth first appeared in the collection of stories, The Thirteen Problems. The first of these, The Tuesday Night Club, introduces Jane Marple, the quiet old lady knitting in a corner who solves the mystery being discussed, to the amazement of everyone else there.

Robert Thorogood rose to fame as the author and screenwriter of the Death in Paradise TV series, also penning several books. With The Marlow Murder Club, retired archaeologist and cryptic crossword setter, Judith Potts witnesses the murder of a neighbour. When the police don’t believe her, Judith and two new friends, vicar’s wife Becks and Suzie, a professional dog walker, get together to solve the crime. Another series being adapted for television, with four books so far plus a fifth due next year.

Other authors creating elderly sleuths include S J Bennett who wrote about, of all people, Queen Elizabeth II. In The Windsor Knot, the first Her Majesty the Queen Investigates book, the eighty-nine-year-old monarch gets involved when a guest at Windsor Castle is found dead in suspicious circumstances.

Another senior sleuth turns up in The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher - a standalone novel about eighty-seven-year-old Florrie Butterfield, a new arrival in a nursing home for the elderly. When she witnesses a fall, she is sure what she saw wasn’t an attempted suicide, but no one will take her seriously. She’ll just have to investigate herself – with the help of one or two new friends.

Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age is a brilliant new series about four elderly assassins: Billie, Mary Alice, Helen and Natalie, suddenly targeted on the eve of their retirement. They’re going to have to go undercover to find out who wants them dead and stop them before it’s too late.  It seems you can’t keep a good killer down. A second book in the series, Kills Well with Others came out earlier this year.

Award-winning author Stef Penney (The Tenderness of Wolves) took a turn at mystery writing with her latest book The Long Water. In a remote Norway town, a popular boy goes missing. As the search widens, a body is found in a disused mine – only this body has been there for decades. Elderly Svea is an outsider, a bit like her granddaughter Elin, both becoming caught up in the hunt for answers. This is crafted mystery full of secrets and with an unforgettable main character.

In An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good, Maud is another irascible character, an 88-year-old Swedish woman who has no qualms about a little murder. Helene Tursten has created a humorous and irreverent collection of stories, which continue in the follow-up title, An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed.

Jess Q Sutanto’s creation, Vera Wong, runs a tea shop where she becomes friends with her customers. But will this be a problem when she discovers a body in her tea shop and determines to find out whodunit, confiscating a crucial piece of evidence? Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is a charming mystery with the second in the series recently published.

There are no doubt more senior protagonists out there getting involved in crime - on whatever side of the law. It's such an appealing genre. Happy reading!

Posted by JAM

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