Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim – the core members of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, and as another resident at their Coopers Chase retirement village puts it, the “cool kids” on the block – are back for a fourth outing in The Last Devil to Die (Viking). This time, they’re hoping for “a new project that moved at a gentler pace than usual. Something a bit less murdery”, perhaps. But Osman doesn’t disappoint: before long, Kuldesh, an old friend in the antiques business, has met his maker, and the gang are on the trail of a heroin importation hub and a killer. Everything is here that fans of the series have come to expect: humour, warmth, the confounding of expectations as these pensioners investigate. There’s also a deeper insight into the character of Ibrahim, who is fast becoming my favourite (sorry Joyce) – for his mission to have the Thursday Murder Club become carbon-neutral by 2030, if he could only stop laminating everything, and his past. Along with the laughs, there is grief, and an ending that is handled sensitively (I was weeping). Osman is writing something new next, about a “father-in-law-daughter-in-law detective duo”, he tells us in his acknowledgments, but he promises that the gang “will also be sticking around for a long time to come”. Thank goodness: we all need a regular injection of the Thursday Murder Club to keep our spirits up.
