 Rydw i ni'n gwaith.wna'n gweithio ar y cwmno oedd Josh Ritter yn Henchysbydd. Rydym yn y cwmno'r rydw i'r rhagel. Rydw i ni'n lliw i gael i'r Llywodraeth. Rydw i ni'n gweithio ar y tîm yng Nghaerdyd ac Anna Gion Johnson. Rydw i ni'n gweithio ar y tîm. Rydw i ni'n gweithio ar y tîm. Rydw i ni'n gweithio ar y tîm. Yn ychydig yng nghaelol yna eich cyllid yna gyda'r cwmno. So, now once you're here now, it's very hard to get out of here. Thank you, but now. Brilliant! So it's a pleasure to be here. It's lovely to have you. And also Tina, you're very welcome. I'm delighted to be back, thank you thank you for having me. So if you were expecting a dark crime novel on gruesome death you'd be about the support, that's not what that, that's not what the books about Tina. Two years ago Richard Olsman introduced the Thirsty Murder Club to us. for unlikely lovable 70-year-olds and could you just give us a wee synopsis of what the Thirsty Club is there? Well, I had never expected that I would be quite such a fan of a book that was based in a nursing home revolving around four settaginarians, but here I am. The Thirsty Murder Club is based in Cooper's Chase. It's a retirement village. These are four best friends who meet on a Thursday afternoon to discuss crime and they try and solve murders. And I suppose I was explaining it to someone, it's like Secret Seven for adults or Famous Five for adults. It really is. The Guardian called it a crime, a cozy crime caper, which I think was lovely. I think hardened crime genre fans might find it a bit soft, but it really is very warm and witty and very like Richard Osman's kind of style that's infused with little bits of comedy, but very intricate plots. But the Thirsty Murder Club was the first book. It was the most borrowed book in 2020 in the UK. The second book then was the fastest selling book and now this one, the bullet that missed, it hit the top of the charts based on pre-orders alone. So it is a very interesting series and I was so excited whenever this one was coming out in the 15th of September. I rushed to the shops after work to buy it and I willed it down. I couldn't get enough of it, so I have to say a big fan. So you've read the other two books as well? I have, yeah. If you have read the first two books, the third book, I suppose naturally makes better sense. I feel I don't know Anna Jane if you would agree that if you haven't read the second one or the first one, could you read it as a standalone book and still enjoy it? I think you could read it as a standalone novel, however, to be familiar with the characters is important and also you see them evolve over the course of the novels. It is a series, so it's important to be familiar with the characters. I don't necessarily think you have to read book two in order to read book three. I think he's forgiving in that when he brings characters up. Connie Johnson is a recurring character from book two and Chris and Donna are back in book three as well. He reintroduces you to them, I think maybe mindful of the fact that maybe someone might not have read the series. But if you have read one, two and three, it's a meeting of old friends. They're such relatable and likable characters. Even the villains are likable. I call them the crime quartet that's back. With added characters for added colour because each one of them has a colourful past and they add something. Each one of them adds something. They're all given a problem at one stage and they all come up with solutions. So they bounce off one another and they're great characters. Each one of them brings something different to the table. I would agree with you there that I read the first one. I didn't finish the second one, but I was able to pick up that Connie Johnson was the person. I sort of said who was Connie Johnson, but then Richard does explain who she is. So I was able to enjoy the third book without having read the second one. But I will revisit the second one now because they are such wonderful characters. Tina, have you run down on the characters, the four main characters? Elizabeth and Joyce are the two ladies. Elizabeth is a former spy for MI5 and she's very cool and very calculated. Joyce then is a softer, more maternal character. She's quite witty. She forgets things. I think she's used as a comic foil against Elizabeth because Elizabeth is quite calculative. Then you have Ron. He's heavily tattooed. He's a West Ham supporter. He's your typical kind of working class cockney gent. And then you have Abraham who is an evasion descent and a doctor and very well spoken. So between the four of them, I think they maybe reflect a wee slice of life of British society. There's a character there that everyone can relate to. And it's very likable. Sorry, just when you're talking about character. Out of all four characters, Joyce is probably, she is definitely my favourite character because she is the most relatable character too. She has her troubles with online shopping on ASOS and following certain characters on Instagram. So I think everybody, you couldn't not like Joyce for who she is. She's very much there as the comic foil. I even loved it whenever she had to have a secret knock for something that had followed the rhythm of the moon pig dot com. I thought it was really cute as well. She's the only one as well who has that, you know, she has a diary in the book. So you get an insight into her mind and I just love her narrative and I think it's just so witty. I mean for the subgenre of crime, I suppose you could call it, there's just humour threaded throughout the novel and as you said, Jean and Tina, if you're looking for a really gritty crime, it's not that. It's just so different from anything I've ever read before and that's what makes it really, really enjoyable. And just before we went on air as well, we're talking about the way that the portray elderly people, not sort of like, you know, past it. And I remember reading John Donnell's book, John Donnell's book, Annam Cara, and one of the things he said was that the passionate heart never ages. And I think that's so true of those four people. I think he very cleverly challenges traditional representations of the elderly in fiction and in the media in general. You know, yes, they are residents in a nursing home, but they still have a very fun filled and active life. He has actually based it on his mother's own experience in a retirement village in East Sussex. That's not called Cooper's Chase, but it's something similar. And he's kind of looked at the lifestyle that she has. And I suppose it's very heartwarming to see that, you know, if you look at maybe Miss Marple, if you look at anyone who's elderly on TV or in books that they're presented in a very limited way, and these characters are so multifaceted and so relatable to you. And they have such a busy lifestyle that it's like, yeah, you know, there is maybe life after retirement or there is life even for people here in nursing homes. Joyce has never given up on the idea that she still might find love, and she's an unsufferable flirt. And even though she has buried her husband already, she still has this, you know, maybe there's still another opportunity out there for me. And there's a lovely optimism on that, you know? Yeah, I picked out an extract of hers that I found hilarious. And it's to do with that, you know, she's still got an interest in finding love, and she becomes interested in this character, Mike Waghorn, who is a co-anchor of Bethany Wates, who they're investigating. And she is just very, very funny, hilarious. And as we were saying about, you just mentioned Bethany Wates there, the plot is really that it starts off, teen at the beginning, with her disappearance, and we presume that she's murdered, and this is the murder club's investigation into that. An awful lot of turns and twists in it. Well, Elizabeth says, never trust a murder without a corpse. So when Bethany Wates' car drives off a cliff but nobody's ever recovered and no one is ever arrested for it, it really opens up the possibility of them having something else to investigate. So that's supposed to be the main plot, and then there's a sub-plot then where a spy from Elizabeth's past, an MI5, comes back to haunt her and she faces the choice of either kill or be killed. So there are busy plots, main plots and sub-plots kind of intermingling with each other, some of which touch very briefly on the second book. But it's a busy little book. It is busy, and that would be, I suppose, if you were giving it a rating out of ten, I would probably give it an eight, because sometimes there's just so much going on, and in addition to the four characters, there's a lot of other characters in the book as well, and sometimes you have to go back, well, I do, go back and see what happened there, who was that person, you know? So as you said, teen, it is very busy, but that's what's so nice about the book as well, is that it's short, and the chapters are short, and they're snappy, and it leaves you hanging, you know, at the end of the chapter. It very much keeps you on your toes. You know, there's no real boredom, and I think whenever they do, flip back and forth between third-person narrative back into Joyce's Diaries, where we get it in her, you know, inimitable style, there's a nice element of variety there, so you don't really get bored, because I find sometimes with some crime novels they're very weighty, they're very heavy, and you know it's not written for pleasure, then you're trying to keep up with maybe two detailed plots, or it's gruesome, or it's very violent, and this isn't like that, it is quite light-hearted. Yes, it is a serious crime novel with, you know, anti-mangling plots, but at no point do you feel that it's very, very heavy. You know, it's a light-hearted read. I think that's his style, isn't it, Richard Osman? He is an entertainer, as we know, if you're familiar with him, from television, and he writes game shows, and his whole, you know, his primary thing is to entertain and amuse, and he definitely gets that across in a series of books, and I think there's a lot more to come. We're on a journey with these characters, and it'll be interesting to see where they go, yeah. One of the things that I thought was really, really clever was how the four of them managed to get into the lives of all the people that they were trying to see where they connected, who murders who, and I was wondering how did she murder that person, that person, and you didn't really know until the very, very end of so many twists and turns, very clever. I kept you guessing, even the last three or four pages, I felt, you know, oh my goodness, I didn't see that coming. Yeah, yeah, isn't that great? Red herrings as well, throw in the red herrings, and you think, oh, I know who did it now, but no. It's no great surprise that the series has been picked up by Amblin Entertainment, which is Steven Spielberg's company, and they're going to make a movie off it, and all Parker will direct it. So, you know, this is probably just a tip of the iceberg for us, then, really. You know, who knows how far this can go. I think the next plan is to write something that's like the Thirsty Murder Club, but apparently meets the Da Vinci codes, so it'll be something a little bit heavier, maybe, on the next venture. I had hoped there would be a fourth. I still do hope that there's a fourth, but... I would, there's definitely a fourth. Yeah, there has to be. I think the two that, Richard Osmond, was he poking fun at the whole TV personality? Do you think that, Anna-Jane, that, you know, that he was, you know, that their makeup and their moisturiser, like Mike was saying, all the moisturiser, and then the stop, the clock show, and the southeast tonight show, that really was he just given a wee jab at how big-headed a lot of those people are? I mean, that's his industry, you know. He worked in this industry, he still works in that industry, so for sure he is poking fun at them, and I think he captures it very well with Pauling, the makeup artist, who becomes part of the Thirsty Murder Club, really, because she strikes up a relationship with Ron, and there's a really funny extract in the book where they end up in a massage parlor, and it's Ron's first time having a massage, and it goes through his thought process, and it's absolutely hilarious. I laughed out loud with that. So he is definitely poking fun at the entertainment industry, and he does it very well. I was trying to see who Mike Wycorran might have been, maybe an illusion to you, or, you know... Yeah, I was thinking, did he have anyone in mind? Yeah, yeah. And we were talking, really, that it's a humorous book, but there's a very sensitive portrayal of Elizabeth's husband who has dementia, and I thought that was very sensitively dealt with in the book. Yeah, it's on a more serious note. It is, you know, there's humor to it as well, but as we know, these people are, you know, more aged. There's a certain cohort of people of 70s heading in towards their 80s, and dementia, unfortunately, is one of those serious things that a lot of people experience, but he deals with it, you know, in a nice way in the book. Yeah, I felt that anytime, you know, age, or ageing, or being unwell was kind of referenced. It was kind of touched upon, and then moved on, that getting older, being sick, was never central to their lives. It wasn't, you know, it doesn't overtake any of them, and he deals with maybe the ageing process quite delicately. It's not milked for pathos in the book at all. Even when Stephen starts to get an inkling about the fact that maybe he might be, you know, suffering from a bit of onset dementia he asks, bogged in, can I ask you honestly, pal, am I all right? But it's never dwelt on too much. It's not milked for sense mentality in the book at all, but I suppose for me, for those characters, it's a thought maybe, and that never goes away for them, but it doesn't overtake their whole lives. It's not central to their whole being. So he's sensitive to it, I think, you know. And we were saying about the human. One of the things that they can remember just off the top of my head, is that whenever they're burying a certain character alive in a grave and a Joyce just looks over and just, would you like a cup of tea? It's really, really humorous. Just encapsulate Joyce really isn't it, her character? Yeah, that darkness always has a bit of a comic foil to kind of, you know, kind of lift your spirits. You know, it's never so gritty that you're kind of losing hope for that it's too grim. And I think, Anna-Gina, that you have a little extract. Yeah, I picked it to pick up the humor in it. Yeah, I picked out an extract, you know, it's Joyce, my favourite character, and I'm sure she resonates with a lot of people and a lot of people love her. And this is about Mike Waghorn, who she takes, you know, a romantic interest in. And this is just a short extract from the books. I'll read it out for the listeners. I will be honest with you. I'd hoped that this evening I would flirt with Mike and he would tell me how much he liked my necklace. Mike would blush and giggle and Elizabeth would roll her eyes. But nothing doing, I'm afraid. All wag and no horn was how Ron put it. Mike gave me a peck on the cheek and at one point he brushed my hand and there was electricity. But I think that was the combination of the deep carpet outside and the restaurant of my new cardigan. Fantastic. It is a wonderful book. And the actual title of the book, Tina, the significance of the bullet that missed at this one of maybe Elizabeth's only faux pas or detective work. It's a bit of a faux pas because it's detected by someone else as well. She's trying to fake something. I don't want to give too much away, but she's trying to fake something and in doing so alerts someone to the fact that she alerts someone to her fakery, I suppose, really. But it is very clever and it takes a while for you to realise what the title is in reference to. It doesn't become immediately clear and you kind of have to wade your way through the novel and then it's like, ah, there's where the title comes from. So very clever. Very clever indeed. So I love the book now. Definitely would recommend it to anyone who just likes a nice read, a few laughs, and something keeps you guessing as well. Out of ten, what would you give it, Tina? I'm going for a nine, but I'm a zipper fan and I'm conscious that if you are, if crime fiction is your thing, if you like dark crime, I'm very conscious that other people might not agree with me. But for me, it's a nine because it is just such an enjoyable read, very relatable, likeable character. So I'm going for a nine. And I'm usually the most cynical pessimistic person in the world. You're not. Andrew Shalifannan. I would give it an eight. I read a lot of crime, a lot of gritty crime. I loved this novel and as I said, it's unlike anything I've ever read before. And the only reason I'm knocking two off is because I think at times there's just so much going on and there's so many characters. It doesn't take away too much from the novel, but at times it can be difficult to... Do you think maybe some of them lack a little bit of depth maybe in places where there isn't too much going on? I wouldn't like to say that. I wouldn't like to say that because I think that the characters are going to keep evolving over the series. There's more to come from the Thursday Murder Club. So I wouldn't necessarily say that. So you're going to go bad cop on ace and I'll go good cop on ace? Yeah, I'll go on eight. Maybe the next one will be a nine or a ten. Who knows? I think I'll give it nine as well. Ladies, thank you so much for taking time out tonight to join me here on the Highland for the Book Club review. I'd love to have you back with me in a few months for another one. We'll look forward to it. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much indeed. Thank you, Jane.