The Last Devil To Die: The Thursday Murder Club 4

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It's Boxing Day lunch at Cooper's Chase, a retirement village in South East England, where resident septuagenarians Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce learn about the murder of antiques dealer, Kuldesh Sharma, who also happens to be a friend of Stephen, Elizabeth's husband. Anyway my point is four books in and Richard Osman has the goddamn audacity to keep handing me not just consistently good but consistently BETTER goddamn books each and every goddamn time.

Is being a spy always this boring?’ he asks Elizabeth. She has been unusually quiet today. ‘It’s 90 per cent this, 5 per cent paperwork and 5 per cent killing people,’ says Elizabeth. Game show host turned bestselling novelist, Richard Osman, is the author behind the mystery club phenomenon known as the Thursday Murder Club. A series of novels which feature Elizabeth (former MI6 spymaster), retired nurse Joyce, Ron, an opinionated ex-union activist, and mild-mannered psychiatrist Ibrahim - a septuagenarian quartet of retirement village dwelling residents who work together to solve murders. Usually by the fourth book in a series, my interest starts to wane and I don’t continue on, but I have grown fond of this gang, and look forward to what’s next! There’s also a subplot about a romance scam. As someone who dealt with a mother taken in by one, I loved how the team dealt with it. I highly recommend The Last Devil to Die to those readers who enjoy a Cozy Mystery with a solid group of main characters!I cannot adequately express how desperately I want Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim, the octogenarian wunderkinds and founding members of "The Thursday Murder Club" to be real so that I can hang out with them. This series keeps getting BETTER and BETTER, and this time Richard Osman has combined a cozy mystery with some thoughtfully written sub plots which include the themes of “romance fraud” and “end of life decisions”. We know by now that outwitting international drug-dealers would be child’s play to the Club’s omnicompetent leader, retired spy Elizabeth, but she has more pressing concerns. In previous books, her husband Stephen had been able to play some part in the adventures despite being in the early stages of dementia, but he has now reached the stage of being only intermittently able to ­recognise her. This storyline marks the series’s transition from quietly poignant to deeply moving, with Osman giving us some of his best writing yet as Elizabeth’s ­situation prompts the other Club members to reflect on their own griefs and lost loves, with one ­character disclosing some sad secrets. You know that the author can write great characters that are humorous, he can certainly write funny, he knows where the jokes can be inserted to make you smile and laugh but what I didn’t anticipate is the writer’s way of dissecting pain and sorrow and put it in wonderful words for us to read. So here’s the anticipated effect, in one chapter you are sobbing and in another you are laughing very hard, you would be looked at as unstable but that’s this book for you. So you are warned, no reading in public places or all the seats next to you will be vacated. The latest adventure of the Thursday Murder Club is also its best…Even if the mysteries weren’t absorbing — which they are —Osman’s books, likeAlexander McCall Smith’s, would work simply because it’s such fun to spend time with these people.What setsDevilapart from its predecessors is the deftness and humor with whichOsmanconfronts a subject that’s completely not funny: dementia…In the end, the murder club books are not really about crime but about friendship and finding ways to stay involved in life.”

I have to warn you though, this book feels like the series' most intimate and emotional one yet, so get the tissues ready. Osman doesn't shy away from talking about growing old and dying. In fact, couched in all that humor and sleuthing is the ever-present specter of death coming for everyone, especially when you are of a certain old age.If you haven't started on your journey with Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, & Ibrahim, then I'd suggest you get a move on. Seriously. Go!