Books Like The Thursday Murder Club — 7 Cosy Mystery Picks
Ruben Montané·Founder & Editor·
What makes The Thursday Murder Club special: Richard Osman takes four elderly residents of a retirement village completely seriously as detectives. Elizabeth is a former spy of indeterminate rank whose contacts and methods are still operational. Joyce is a retired nurse whose observations about human behavior are forensically precise. Ibrahim is a psychiatrist who reads people as naturally as most read text. Ron is a union agitator whose relationship with authority is adversarial by principle. Their dynamic — the warm bickering, the professional mutual respect, the occasional genuine tenderness — is what makes the books feel inhabited rather than assembled. The Coopers Chase retirement home is an ideal cosy setting: enclosed, full of history, full of people with secrets worth keeping. Osman's television presenter instincts thread through every page — the dialogue is timed with comedic precision. And the mysteries are genuinely constructed: the clues are there, and the solutions are earned. Very few books manage this exact balance of warmth and proper whodunit.
The direct sequel and the most obvious next read — Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron are back, the banter is sharper, and the mystery involves diamonds and a very inconvenient ex-husband. The Thursday Murder Club series is now four books long and every entry maintains the quality of the first. Start here if you want more of exactly what you loved. This delivers every element of the original: Elizabeth's tradecraft applied to increasingly improbable situations, Joyce's diary entries as comic counterpoint, Ron's instinct for class-based analysis of every crime scene, and Ibrahim's psychiatric precision brought to bear on suspects who would rather not be read quite so accurately.
Precious Ramotswe sets up Botswana's first female detective agency and solves cases with wisdom, intuition, and an unshakeable moral compass. The warmth and the unconventional protagonist are directly comparable to Osman's approach — McCall Smith takes Mma Ramotswe as seriously as Osman takes Elizabeth. A long-running series (over 20 books) for readers who want to live inside a world rather than just visit it. This specifically delivers what Thursday Murder Club readers love about Elizabeth: a detective whose greatest asset is her accumulated knowledge of human nature, applied with patience and moral certainty, in a setting that feels like a real community rather than a crime-scene backdrop.
Not a mystery, but the same combination of a charming, witty protagonist confined to a small world, enormous warmth, and prose that makes you feel the author genuinely enjoys the company of his characters. Count Alexander Rostov is house-arrested in a Moscow hotel for decades and makes it into the richest life imaginable. The experience of reading it is strikingly similar to the pleasure of Osman's books. A Gentleman in Moscow delivers specifically what Thursday Murder Club readers love about the Coopers Chase setting: the idea that containment within a small, carefully observed world is not limitation but opportunity, and that the richest lives are built from deep attention to what is close at hand.
The blueprint: an elderly woman in a small English village whom everyone underestimates, using that invisibility and a lifetime of observing human nature to solve crimes the police cannot. Osman has spoken about Christie's influence on the Thursday Murder Club, and Elizabeth is in many ways Miss Marple updated for the 21st century. Start with the first Marple novel and work through the twelve that follow. If you loved Thursday Murder Club's premise — that age means competence, not decline, and that being underestimated is a tactical advantage — Miss Marple invented that dynamic ninety years ago and still executes it with a precision no one has quite matched.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache investigates murders in the fictional Quebec village of Three Pines — a setting as fully realised as Osman's Coopers Chase, and an ensemble of recurring characters as richly drawn as the Thursday Murder Club itself. Penny is considered one of the finest mystery writers working today; the series has eighteen books and improves as it goes. Literary quality, genuine warmth, and mysteries with real stakes. The Inspector Gamache series is the recommendation for Thursday Murder Club readers who most love the community — the sense that the village is almost as important as the detective — because Three Pines is one of the most fully inhabited settings in contemporary crime fiction.
Flavia de Luce is eleven years old, obsessed with chemistry and poisons, and the most brilliantly eccentric amateur sleuth in modern crime fiction. Set in 1950s rural England, Bradley's series is frequently compared to Osman's in terms of tone — the protagonist is underestimated by everyone around her, the detective work is genuinely clever, and the books are enormously enjoyable to inhabit. Eight novels in the series so far. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie specifically matches Thursday Murder Club's combination of a detective who uses their marginalized status (old age, in Osman's case; childhood, in Bradley's) as a source of access and information that official investigators cannot obtain.
Hamish Macbeth is a lazy, ambitious-averse constable in the Scottish Highlands who always manages to solve the case before the ambitious officers from the city. Thirty-five books of pure comfort reading — the Scottish setting, the eccentric community, and Hamish's cheerful refusal to advance his career make these the ideal companion for anyone who loves Osman's combination of coziness and clever plotting. M.C. Beaton also wrote the Agatha Raisin series, another 30+ book comfort read. Death of a Gossip is specifically for Thursday Murder Club readers who most love Ron's dynamic — the competent person whom official authority consistently underestimates — because Hamish Macbeth runs that joke for three and a half decades without ever making it feel stale.
Four, as of 2024: The Thursday Murder Club (2020), The Man Who Died Twice (2021), The Bullet That Missed (2022), and The Last Devil to Die (2023). Richard Osman has confirmed the series will continue. All four books follow Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron at the Coopers Chase retirement village — each can be enjoyed individually, but they're best read in order.
Is there a Thursday Murder Club TV show or movie?
A Netflix film adaptation was announced with a strong cast including Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley. It was in production as of 2024. There is no ongoing TV series at time of writing, but the film has generated significant interest in one.
What makes cosy mysteries different from regular crime fiction?
Cosy mysteries typically feature amateur detectives rather than police, a contained community setting (a village, a retirement home, a bookshop), minimal graphic violence, and an emphasis on character and wit over procedural detail or darkness. The murder is a puzzle rather than a source of dread. Osman's series is a good example of a modern cosy that pushes the form slightly — his books have more emotional depth and more genuine stakes than the traditional category allows.
What order should I read the Thursday Murder Club books in?
Publication order: start with The Thursday Murder Club, then The Man Who Died Twice, then The Bullet That Missed, then The Last Devil to Die. The series has an ongoing plot with recurring characters and an evolving mystery involving Elizabeth's past, so reading in order gives you the full payoff. Each book also works as a standalone mystery.