PC Donna De Freitas would like to have a gun. She would like to be chasing serial killers into abandoned warehouses, grimly getting the job done, despite a fresh bullet wound in her shoulder. Perhaps developing a taste for whisky and having an affair with her partner. But for now, twenty-six years old, and sitting down for lunch at 11.45 in the morning, with four pensioners she has only just met, Donna understands that she will have to work her way up to all that.
Ever wonder what your favorite TV detective did before they became a detective? After all, you don’t just walk into a police station, fill out a job application and start work the next day on the detective squad. (Probably, anyway, though who really knows for sure.) In the world of detective fiction, anyway, readers or viewers of TV shows are rarely given the full career arc of a detective, usually coming in at some point after their first day on the job since that role is typically filled by the tragic secondary character who dies. PC De Freitas is not yet to the point of becoming a respected detective or even close to it for that matter. So, without giving anything away, if PC De Freitas should go to become a detective in the sequels to this book, the reader will be given a rare glimpse into the making of such a creature. Of course, it is also possible that Donna does not even make out of her alive.
Elizabeth had formed the Thursday Murder Club with Penny. Penny had been an inspector in the Kent Police for many years, and she would bring along the files of unsolved murder cases. She wasn’t really supposed to have the files, but who was to know? After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children.
Joyce is one of the elderly women who calls the retirement community at the center of the story home. In her younger days she was a nurse. The book is divided far from equally in terms of narration duties. For around every five chapters narrator in the third-person there is a first-person chapter narrated by Joyce. Elizabeth has a murkier background in which she may or may not have been a spy though it would seem to lean heavier toward “may” since she is, after all, able to procure a spot for PC De Freitas on the squad doing actual murder investigations. The novel revolves around the how the Thursday Murder Club is used to investigating cold cases, but suddenly get a very hot one to pursue.
Was it a mistake to get as far away from Carl as she could? To transfer to Fairhaven in a frightened huff? Of course it was a mistake. It was stupid. Donna has always been headstrong, always acted quickly and decisively. Which is a fine quality when you are right, but a liability when you are wrong. It’s great to be the fastest runner, but not when you’re running in the wrong direction. Meeting the Thursday Murder Club was the first good thing that had happened to Donna in a long time. That and Tony Curran being murdered.
This insight into the ambitious young PC offers an ugly glimpse into the world of law enforcement that everyone must know exists but few take time to consider. The world is one of duality in all things. Wherever there is light there must also be the capacity for dark. And as this quote shows, the same goes for the vice of the versa: what is horrible for someone is pure gold for a cop on the rise. While it is true that the focus of this story—and much of the attention given to it—is on the elderly characters comprising the Thursday Murder Club who seem always to be a step ahead of the official investigation, the real meat of the narrative is on that foremost member of the official investigative team. PC Donna De Freitas is looking for that luck of the draw that separates those who successfully climb their way up a bureaucratic hierarchy and those who get tangled in it and stuck in place.
