As a young person, I read - quite a bit. One of my favourite fiction authors was Agathe Christie. (I only found Tolkien and Lewis when I'd left school, and both wrote fiction and non-fiction.) A while ago, on a Sunday morning, I happened to tune in to a radio station where a British author was discussing his books. I knew of the author as an occasional guest on a TV panel show. During this interview, I learned he'd been with the BBC for some time - but always behind the scenes.
Even his appearances as a panellist were not simple - he wears very thick glasses and even with them can't read an autocue. This brought him to books. These are sufficiently Agatha Christie-like to suit my taste - but sufficiently unique to make them really enjoyable. What are these differences?
Firstly, there's not one "hero" - there are four residents of a retirement village who investigate "ordinary" murders. Each chapter is told by a different one, which makes them relatively short, so even with my memory, it is manageable. Some chapters are told by other characters, and we've read the series of four books, so we know which became part of the core.
Second, if you hadn't noticed from the first point, these are retired citizens, making this possibly the first series about a bunch of "retired" sleuths. The husband of one of them is even in the early stages of dementia. A series that recognises life does not always have to end at 70.
Finally, there's more than you might expect after the last chapter - or where there might ordinarily be a last chapter. This might develop character traits while showing X wasn't actually murdered, and the person who admitted to two murders was innocent of them, but had murdered someone else for whom DNA evidence unexpectedly turned up where no one expected.
If you're interested, the author is Richard Osman, and the series is The Thursday Murder Club.
Note: my wife has gone on to read another series by the same author, but while I started the first, it didn't quite have the same taste to it.
Note 2: We've also seen a series on the internet which started on stage in the UK. The ones we've seen all seem to be whodunnits, but obviously, we've only seen a small sample.. The "Gone Wrong" shows are all very funny. They're the sort of show where if you laugh out loud, it's very likely you missed something. Jokes don't seem to build from show to show, although some elements are bound to have been repeated.