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If you haven’t read any of this series yet, now’s the time to start. Read the first, The Thursday Murder Club, and work your way through. They’re fun and smart, and the detectives are octogenarians living in a retirement community. These amateur sleuths’ advanced age is one of the best ways to be invisible, taken for granted, or dismissed as a threat, which is super helpful when investigating.
In this installment, an old friend of one character gets murdered after an antique filled with heroin is brought to his store on its way to be moved along the drug delivery chain. And as the Thursday Murder Club gets involved with this mystery that strikes close to home, more murders happen, giving them more to solve.
Meanwhile, characters of all ages are facing personal changes of various types, which now feel personal to the readers who have gotten invested over the course of four books. One story line in particular is powerful and poignant (no spoilers here!), and Osman handles it with delicacy, respect and loving care for these people who may be fictional but represent real issues faced outside of the pages of a book.
Osman writes in his acknowledgments that he plans to write a new book next about a father-in-law/daughter-in-law pair of detectives but that Thursday Murder Club fans should not despair — another in this series will be forthcoming.
I do adore these characters and find myself chuckling over the things they say and do, particularly showing up the unfortunate souls who underestimate them.
The Last Devil to Die is just as enjoyable as the books before it, and indeed may be the best because of the aforementioned topic that is weighty but perfectly presented.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes occasional uses of mild language, a few instances of the name of Deity in vain, and a couple uses of British profanity not seen as profanity in the US. Violence includes several murders but descriptions are not gory. Sexual content includes some passing references of people sleeping together.
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