The Last Devil To Die: The Thursday Murder Club 4

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But I think I’m trying to do something else as well, which is to say I think we’re probably kinder, nicer as human beings than we’re currently being given credit for. It’s to Osman’s credit, ­however, that now that the world has fallen in love with his septuagenarian sleuths, he’s starting to allow the harsher realities of old age to bite them. Naturally, the Club members pride themselves on their devious methods of finding what lies behind the façade of murder and mayhem.

Like when policeman Chris pokes around on his own, trying to get into the headquarters of one of the suspects, and thinks back to the olden days of policing. Artist and academic Lisa Perrin’s first book is a gorgeously illustrated and designed collection of biographies of that most romantic and maligned of villainesses: the poisoner.Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim are up against a ruthless murderer who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. This book does fall down a bit when it comes to the plot: Osman has proved a decent enough plotter in the past, but I suspect a couple of major reveals here will have been foreseen by most readers a few hundred pages in advance. So that’s been my attitude, and my attitude now is listen, I’ll keep at it for as long as it continues, it delights me. Richard Osman’s first three Thursday Murder Club mysteries are among the 10 bestselling hardback novels since UK records began; I ­suspect only nuclear armageddon or an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant plague can prevent this fourth entry in the series from muscling onto the list.

The Man Who Died Twice] captures the spirit of older folks who don't want to be pigeonholed by their age and who capture the charming insouciance of those who've seen a lot.Osman’s plots play fair with the reader, carefully placing “red herrings” to fool the reader into picking the wrong possible murder suspect—a gambit that has improved with each successive book. They live in an upscale retiree village in the bucolic English countryside (money does grease the wheels of aging). My mom lives in a retirement community and honestly, it just reminds me of a university campus, but where no one has to do any essays so they can get up and pretty much do what they want all the time. The new book begins with the shooting of Kuldesh Sharma, the genial 80-year-old antiques dealer who gave the Club some valuable assistance in the previous volume, The Bullet That Missed. His first three novels, The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and The Bullet That Missed were multi-million-copy record-breaking bestsellers around the world.