The narrative opens with retired nurse Joyce Meadowcraft’s diary, discussing when she met fellow retiree Elizabeth Best three months or so ago. Elizabeth questions Joyce about a girl who was stabbed with a knife. She asks Joyce how long it would have taken the victim to bleed to death, and if the woman would have survived longer with someone there with medical training to help save her. Joyce responds that the size of the woman described would “probably die in around forty-five minutes” and “wouldn’t die at all” if she had help (2). Elizabeth then invites Joyce to the Thursday Murder Club, a weekly gathering held at their retirement home, Coopers Chase.

Switching narrative into third-person and out of the diary, Chapter 2 opens with Police Constable (PC) Donna De Freitas, who is sitting with pensioners at the Coopers Chase Retirement Village. She is there to give a talk about safety, but the participants complain that they already know all the basic security measures. Donna is later invited to lunch with Elizabeth, Joyce, and two other retirees: Ron Ritchie and Ibrahim Arif. Donna asks how they all became friends, and after some joking around about it, Joyce explains that they are the “Thursday Murder Club” (6).