Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim and their Thursday Murder Club are back along with DCI Chris Hudson and PC Donna De Freitas. Praising the characters, Michael Dirda of The Washington Post wrote that the Thursday Murder Club were "ordinary old people yet, like all old people, much deeper and complicated than they appear". Joyce, the diarist, is a former nurse, who seems a gentle, naïve soul, but there’s almost no blood and gore that she hasn’t seen before.

Or when my kids get all upset and ask me why I sent them the sarcastic smiley face emoji when all I was trying to do was send a smiley face because forfuckssake how can you tell the difference between smiley face emojis they all look the same! On reflection, he can’t even remember whose grenades they were, or why he had agreed to bury them, but that comes with age. Bogdan (whose name I heard as BobDan for the entirety of the 1st book), Donna, Chris, Patrice, and everyone else that they add to their little murder club as the books go by are all so real to me. Super easy to devour in one sitting this is one of those highly anticipated novels you can’t wait to start yet you don’t want to finish simply because you’re in such splendid company. and where he has all manner of gold, gems, artwork, you-name-it, held as deposits for various drug dealers as they negotiate their swaps.The impetus to this adventure is Elizabeth receiving a letter from an old colleague/flame, who finds himself in a bit of a bind and is hoping for her assistance. I am learning that it is important to stop sometimes, and just have a drink and a gossip with your friends, even as corpses start to pile up around you. I’m spacing them out a little, because I have so many other books to read and because I feel like a lot of series’ get a bit repetitive when you read them too close together.

Thank you to Penguin/Viking for providing me with a widget of the ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.I don't think any threads were left untied, and I'm pleased to say our four heroes are more or less intact to fight another day! This story opens with our favourite psychiatrist, Ibrahim, being knocked down by a cyclist who grabs his phone and makes off with it.

Bogdan, a Polish man of many useful talents, helps around Cooper's Chase and in this one, is particularly helpful to Elizabeth. I feel like this book should’ve come with a content warning for what happened to Ibrahim, who is probably my favourite of the four?With the investigation going into multiple directions and chaos going around every corner, it’s a mystery how the cases are even solved. I loved this one from start to finish, and adored the humorous and thoughtful author acknowledgements section. I like how underneath all the comic capering Richard Osman isn’t afraid to touch on the type of problems associated with old age such as dementia (Stephen) and how easy it can be to lose one’s confidence following an unexpected turn of events (Ibrahim). I enjoyed digging into Elizabeth's fascinating old life in the secret service and how issues with people and drama from her past that seemed resolved showed up again when she least expected it.