Praise for The Last Devil to Die : —People — The Last Devil To Die. . . But there’s more than just quotable sentences at work here. 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. The endings feel both inevitable and earned: the exact combination one wants in a good mystery. . . Osman’s greatest strength is fusing the puzzle-mastery of Christie and her Golden Age peers with emotional earnestness and wry humor.”—Esquire — Wall Street Journal The Last Devil to Die is a beautiful send-off that will get us through the wait."—Elle — NPR —The Guardian — Seattle Times — starred review The Last Devil To Die reduced me to tears at more than one point.”—The Christian Science Monitor The Last Devil to Die … The kindness is his books comes out of something greater for Osman. It’s how he wants the world to be and it’s how he thinks the world is, if only we could realize it.”— Town & Country — Shelf AwarenessDevil apart from its predecessors is the deftness and humor with which Osman confronts 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.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune — — AirMail —Kirkus The Bullet That Missed with a bittersweet mystery about the problems facing many older people: dementia, computer fraud, death. Humor does, however, alleviate the poignancy in this strongest, most emotional book in the best-selling series.”— Library Journal , starred reviewThe Bullet That Missed :—Washington Post “The Bullet That Missed hits on every front. Its quandaries stymie, its solutions thrill, its banter is worth reciting and its characters exemplify an admirable camaraderie. One can only hope that the Thursday Murder Club’s next outing appears before long.”—Wall Street Journal The Thursday Murder Club , an international bestseller, was funny, original, baffling, poignant and thoroughly engaging. That's a high bar to set from the get-go, but Osman has easily achieved it in subsequent books… This book is as delightful as the others. A remarkable achievement, Osman up there effortlessly balancing on that very high bar.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune —Parade —People —Kirkus , starred review The Man Who Lived Twice ) delivers laughs along with a nicely woven plot....The pace is breezy, the characters are intelligent and varied in their interests and backgrounds, and the humor is often pitched to readers who understand the vagaries of getting older. Osman reliably entertains.”Publishers Weekly Town and Country
★ 09/01/2023
A murder on Boxing Day strikes close to home for the Thursday Murder Club. Antiques dealer Kuldesh Sharma knows some of his transactions are shady, including his purchase of a box, contents unknown, that he's warned not to open. He suspects his shop has become a drop-off for drugs. Following Kuldesh's murder, the box and its contents, which turn out to be heroin, go missing. The local police are thrown off the case so a national force can search for the killer and the drugs. Meanwhile, a local dealer is frantically looking for the box too. Thankfully, the four senior sleuths from Coopers Chase are already on the job. Kuldesh was involved in their last adventure, and he was a friend of Elizabeth's husband Stephen. Elizabeth is preoccupied at the moment, as Stephen's dementia worsens, so Joyce steps up to lead the case. By the time there are a couple more murders, several tragic deaths, and a computer crime or two, the club members are once again cognizant of their own mortality. VERDICT Osman follows The Bullet That Missed with a bittersweet mystery about the problems facing many older people: dementia, computer fraud, death. Humor does, however, alleviate the poignancy in this strongest, most emotional book in the best-selling series.—Lesa Holstine
2023-06-21
Osman's series about a group of four British old-age pensioners and the helpful friends—police officers, cocaine dealers, former KGB operatives—who help them solve crimes has been so popular that, in this installment, the author barely bothers to fill in the background for new readers, so we'll give you a helpful primer: Former spy Elizabeth Best, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft, psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and longtime union organizer Ron Ritchie live at the seemingly peaceful but surprisingly deadly Coopers Chase retirement community, where they started off meeting every week in the Jigsaw Room to solve cold cases—but now find that the murders are hot and coming directly to them. In their last outing, they were helped by antiques dealer Kuldesh Sharma, an old friend of Elizabeth's husband, Stephen, and now they're devastated to learn that Kuldesh has been murdered, shot in the head while parked at the end of a dirt road. A missing shipment of heroin seems to have been involved. This gives the gang another chance to fearlessly poke their noses into places you wouldn't expect to find people their age as the body count grows by leaps and bounds. In a moving subplot, Elizabeth and Stephen come together to face his advancing dementia. Other than that, the characters feel a bit more quickly sketched than usual, though the strands of the plot multiply entertainingly and get tied together in the usual satisfying way. Perhaps Osman knew he needed a break; in the acknowledgments, he promises that this won't be the last Thursday Murder Club book, but he says his next novel will be about a father-in-law–daughter-in-law pair of detectives. There's something to look forward to.
Osman serves up another delightful mystery even if he's not at the top of his game.
Fiona Shaw returns to the Thursday Murder Club series with a tour-de-force performance befitting Richard Osman's rich character development and cleverly connected crimes. Shaw's subtle variations in tone, cadence, and accent distinguish the familiar residents of Cooper's Chase, as well as the sweeping cast of police detectives and criminals. Osman's wise decision to continue aging his intrepid pensioners is echoed by Shaw in her emotional connection to the characters, particularly through her understated rendering of Joyce's contemplative diary voice. Osman expertly weaves an intricate tale of heroin smuggling, online elder scamming, and the sometimes-crooked antiques business with the vicissitudes of aging and its ensuing pain, all warmly realized by Shaw's stellar narration. A fascinating discussion between author and narrator ends the audiobook. S.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
SEPTEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
