Book Review: The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

At first glance, The Last Devil to Die is an ordinary tale—bad guys who need a place to hide a boatload of cocaine pick an innocuous antique shop as the perfect place to stash their stash. But something went wrong. The owner, Kuldesh Sharma, is found dead in the woods, shot by persons unknown. He’s a friend of the Thursday Murder Club. Readers know how Kuldesh died, but at whose hand and why, well, that and the missing cocaine is the mystery.

On December 27th, at eleven p.m., alone in his car, Kuldesh waits for someone. He’s near eighty; memories flood his mind.

Kuldesh thinks about his friend Stephen. How he looks now. How lost, how quiet, how reduced. Is that the future for him too? What fun they used to have, the whole lot of them. The noise they would make.

 

The world is becoming a whisper to Kuldesh now. Wife gone, friends falling. He misses the roar of life.

 

And then in walked the man with the box.

Kuldesh doesn’t have the box with him but he’s sure he can explain that away. He hopes to be “on his way before the snow turns to ice.” Sadly, that’s not to be.

Reminiscing and regrets is not the modus operandi of the Thursday Murder Club: “The four retirees who comprise the Thursday Murder Club are wily, thoughtful of each other, and run rings around non-retirees. They live in an upscale retiree village in the bucolic English countryside (money does grease the wheels of aging).” Solving mysteries and murders is something at which they excel: “the antiques business, where the tricks of the trade are as old as the objects themselves,” doesn’t faze them. How could it? The methods used by drug dealers and art forgers are stock in trade of the criminal element and the Club deals deftly with those sorts. Just ask jailed criminal mastermind Connie Johnson if the Club is effective—she returns in The Bullet That Missed and The Last Devil to Die.

Humor is an integral part of the Thursday Murder Club series. It frequently manifests itself in the dance between the Club and the official police. Naturally, the Club members pride themselves on their devious methods of finding what lies behind the façade of murder and mayhem. The police, understandably, would prefer to investigate without a quartet of old codgers always beating them to the punch. Same old/same old, until police from the outside take over the investigation of Kuldesh Sharma’s death. Actions have consequences: the local constabulary and the Club join forces.

In The Last Devil to Die, Elizabeth’s beloved husband Stephen is slipping away from her with fewer and fewer good days.  To say more would be to slip into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, Elizabeth is not herself so Joyce steps up to take the lead in the new investigation. Granted, that means less time for Joyce to spoil male residents with cake and conversation.  Retired nurse Joyce always has an eye for a handsome male, like Mervyn, a newcomer to Coopers Chase. Ibrahim isn’t sure about Mervyn although he’s horrified that he’s being scammed by an online professional posing as a lonely-hearted lady.

Ibrahim wonders what they should do about Mervyn. He was a difficult man, that much was certain, and he had come into their orbit only because Joyce couldn’t resist a deep voice and a sense of mystery. But he was a lonely man, and he was being taken advantage of. And, besides, it might be nice for the Thursday Murder Club to have a new project that moved at a gentler pace than usual. Something a bit less murdery would be quite a novelty.

Fans of the Thursday Murder Club series return for rat-a-tat banter, deepening knowledge of all the characters, and snapshots of the investigation—whodunnit sometimes takes second place to leisurely asides. 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. 

Policing must have been so much easier in the seventies, when you could just openly take bribes. He remembers an old DI of his from the days on the force who’d got Wimbledon Royal Box seats just for losing a vital piece of evidence.

Richard Osman is taking a pause on the Thursday Murder Club series because he has a new series afoot. But it’s only a pause, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim will be back. Perhaps when Hollywood settles matters with actors and writers, production will begin on the first Thursday Murder Club movie, helmed by Steven Spielberg. According to The Bookseller, “Osman will begin a new series in 2024, starring a father and daughter-in-law duo who run their own private investigation company which takes them around the world, solving mysteries that nobody else can. He told BBC News in July [2023] that his new series will be ‘a sort of Thursday Murder Club meets The Da Vinci Code,’ inspired by a recent visit to a bookshop.” How great does that sound? 

Enjoy The Last Devil to Die. Like all the Thursday Murder Club mysteries, it’s devilishly clever.