Read vs Listen: The Thursday Murder Club

One hundred and fifteen chapters at about three pages each, most of them cutting away just as something happens.

Confidence 87%, which puts it in the clear band. Bands run from close call at 50 to 64, through leaning at 65 to 79 and clear at 80 to 94, up to clear cut at 95 and above.

What this book actually is

One hundred and fifteen chapters, split into two parts, across 368 to 400 pages depending on the edition. That works out at about three to three and a half pages a chapter. Reviewers consistently note that chapters end on a cliffhanger and cut to a different strand, a rhythm widely attributed to the author's television background.

Two registers run alongside each other. The bulk is third person following several characters, including the four club members and the police officers investigating. Interleaved with it are one member's first-person diary entries. The switch is signposted by the chapter heading, which carries a name: the publisher's own extract opens with a chapter headed 'Joyce' in a first-person diary voice, and follows it with a chapter headed 'PC Donna De Freitas' in third person.

The case for reading it

It is a single argument and it is a fair one. The chapter headings tell you whose head you are about to be in, and the eye takes that in before it reaches the first word. With an ensemble this size, residents and police and suspects together, being able to glance backwards to check who somebody is has real value, and scrubbing through twelve hours does not replace it. The visible rhythm of the very short chapters is a structural feature you can see on the page and that passes as brief pauses in audio, as is the division into two parts.

The case for listening to it

Lesley Manville reads the whole novel and differentiates the ensemble by accent and age, which does the same job as the chapter headings and does it at the moment you need it. One reviewer credits her range of voices and accents directly. The Times named the recording Audiobook of the Week and called it the best escapist listen of the year, a line quoted on Penguin's own audio campaign page. The structure suits the ear too: a hundred and fifteen chapters designed to cut away just as something happens is a shape built for someone who is walking, and the comedy sits at roughly a joke a page, which is delivery work rather than reading work. There is also a straightforward content argument, because the recording ends with an exclusive conversation between Richard Osman and Marian Keyes that no print edition contains.

The audiobook in detail

Penguin Audio released it on 3 September 2020 in the UK and 22 September in the US. Lesley Manville reads the entire novel; Osman and Keyes are credited for the closing conversation only, which is worth knowing because retailer listings imply otherwise. The run time is 12 hours 26 minutes on Audible, 12 hours 25 on Penguin Random House, Apple Books and xigxag, and 12 hours 24 on Kobo US, which comes to about 8 hours 17 minutes at one and a half times speed whichever figure you take. Two things are easy to buy by accident. There is a separate abridged BBC Radio 4 reading by Haydn Gwynne, broadcast in early 2021, which is a different recording entirely. And Manville reads only the first two books in the series: Fiona Shaw takes over from the third.

Who should ignore this verdict

Anyone who intends to read all five books and wants one voice throughout, because the narrator changes after the second. Anyone who reads crime with a notebook and wants to turn back and check what a suspect said in chapter forty. And anyone who came from the 2025 Netflix film and wants to compare scene by scene, which is a page-turning job.

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