Title: The Marlow Murder Club

Author: Robert Thorogood

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 344

Rating: 4/5

I’ve been meaning to get to this book for a while. In fact, it was already on my radar before Thorogood came to speak at the local arts centre, where I used to work. I’ve been meaning to pick up some of Thorogood’s Death in Paradise series, too.

This one particularly appealed to me because it’s set in Marlow, where the author lives and where I used to work. In fact, most of the stuff that I tabbed out to talk about on my YouTube channel was because he was writing about places that I knew and could picture in my head, rather than because of the plot itself.

With that said, the plot is pretty tight, although it’s unfortunate for Thorogood that it has a lot of similarities with Richard Osman’s mystery novels, which started coming out at around the same time. I’m not saying that Thorogood stole the idea, of course, because he didn’t. It was just something in the zeitgeist I guess, but it’s unfortunate for him because Osman has sold so many books that Thorogood might struggle. People will feel as though they’ve already read it.

And yet Thorogood’s book is better, mostly because he’s got so much experience writing in the genre thanks to Death in Paradise. I’m not sure at the moment whether he plans to turn it into a series, but if he does then this was a promising first novel and I loved the main character. She was just the right amount of quirky, an elderly woman who has no need of a man and who regularly goes for naked swims in the Thames.

Then we have the mystery elements, which also worked well, as well as the fact that it grabs you by the collar and pulls you right in from the start. All in all, it’s a cracker of a mystery novel and the kind of book that I inhale.

Learn more about The Marlow Murder Club.