The Thursday Murder Club #4
429 pages
Publisher: Penguin
Own
Blurb
Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club.
An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.
As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters
and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.
With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on
their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to
die?
Review
“We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, so we hurry alongside it to keep up. […] But it doesn’t you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here.”
I came to this fourth Thursday Murder Club mystery fully expecting another crime caper featuring our unlikely and delightful group of pensioner sleuths. And that’s exactly what I found between the covers, but there is so much more to this story. While it is true that the previous three books were also more than ‘just’ fascinating mysteries, The Last Devil to Die touched me harder and deeper than any of the previous instalments.
The problem with reading a series of books is that there’s a serious danger of falling in love with the main protagonists. And that would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that sometimes bad things happen to great characters. It had been building over the books so far but in this book Elizabeth and Stephen’s ordeal broke my heart. At the same time, I greatly appreciate how Stephen allowed me to see a very different side to the otherwise cool, brusque, self-sufficient, and apparently unbreakable Elizabeth. I am also grateful for the way Richard Osman handled what is a very sensitive and divisive issue. For spoiler reasons that’s all I’m willing to say about this aspect of the story, but I’m looking forward to the moment when I meet others who have read this book and being able to discuss it.
The mystery in this book is possibly the most outlandish so far. The twists and turns are numerous and follow each other at a furious pace. Nothing and nobody is quite what or who they appear to be and characters you thought you knew through and through suddenly show a different side you never saw before. Laugh-out-loud moments mix with heartbreaking scenes to keep the reader on their toes while never allowing us to wallow for too long.
I’m so very impressed with what Richard Osman has done in these books. He’s managed to make a highly improbable set of sleuths into a plausible and always successful team. I sometimes feel that I should be rolling my eyes, but for reasons probably only known to the author, I never do. Because everything works. The mystery while somewhat unlikely, is well plotted and the characters are charming and lifelike. These books have taken crime capers and turned them into stories that also contain life lessons through storylines that will stay with you.
“We call people “dead” because we need a word for it, but “dead” just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.”
I could have filled several pages with quotable sentences and paragraphs from this book. I limited myself to the three you find here because they stood out for me but on a different day, I might have picked three other ones.
My copy of the book came with bonus content in the form of the original but eventually discarded first chapter of this book. While there is nothing wrong with the book as it was published, I have to admit I’m now very curious about what happened next to Garry Grant.
I’m not sure what else to say about The Last Devil to Die and the series it is part of except that if you like books that you will lose yourself in, inspired mysteries, and stories that touch every emotion known to man, these are the books you want to read.
“Waiting for the last devil to die? What a joke. New devils will always spring up, like daffodils in springtime.”
