THE BULLET THAT MISSED

The Thursday Murder Club gets into another spot of bother, this time involving some British television celebrities, a Russian former spy, and an international money launderer—among others.

This is the third book in real-life British TV celebrity Osman's delightful series of mysteries set at Coopers Chase, a bucolic English retirement community. The first two have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic, and Steven Spielberg has bought the movie rights; if you haven't read the earlier books, The Thursday Murder Club (2020) and The Man Who Died Twice (2021), it would be a good idea to go back and start at the beginning. As this installment opens, the four septuagenarian members of the club—former MI6 agent Elizabeth Best, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft, psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and longtime union organizer Ron Ritchie—are investigating another murder from their cold-case files. It seems that Bethany Waites, a local TV journalist, was about to crack a huge tax avoidance scheme when her car went over a cliff 10 years ago. Who was she going to meet late at night? Why wasn't her car caught on more surveillance cameras between her home and the cliff? Of course, the friends aren't content to do their research online; they inveigle their way into a variety of situations that enable them to question Bethany's friends and colleagues, the chief constable in charge of the case, the drug dealer they put in jail in the last volume (who's determined to kill Ron as soon as she gets out), and many other more or less savory characters. And that's not even to mention the mysterious Viking who's threatening to kill Joyce if Elizabeth doesn't kill Viktor Illyich, a competitor-turned-friend who, when he worked for the KGB, was known as the Bullet. All of this enables Osman to engineer scenes such as "three old men...the gangster, the KGB colonel and the trades union official" playing snooker, drinking whiskey, and thinking maybe this is all they really need in life. The mysteries are complex, the characters vivid, and the whole thing is laced with warm humor and—remarkably, considering the body count—good feeling.

Your next must-read mystery series.