I cannot think of another series with a more moving exploration of love after a lifetime together, and The Last Devil To Die reduced me to tears at more than one point.” Delivers the same kind of clever dialogue, colorful characters and corkscrew plotting that made the other books so much fun… As you reach the last chapters of this book, you’ll think you’ve figured out the mystery. You’ll think so several times. ButOsmanand the Thursday Murder Club will keep the surprises coming.” The mysteries are complex, the characters vivid, and the whole thing is laced with warm humor and—remarkably, considering the body count—good feeling. Your next must-read mystery series.” I found myself utterly engrossed, eagerly anticipating each twist and revelation. This audiobook had me laughing, gasping, and even shed a tear. It's a testament to Osman's storytelling and Shaw's narration that they created an experience that will stay with me long after the final chapter. Osman shares in his author’s note that he is working on a new series, so it might be some time before we see our friends from Coopers Chase. I will miss them.

Is being a spy always this boring?’ he asks Elizabeth. She has been unusually quiet today. ‘It’s 90 per cent this, 5 per cent paperwork and 5 per cent killing people,’ says Elizabeth. It was great to see Joyce come into her own, channeling her inner Elizabeth. I also loved the Murder Club's chutzpah as they dropped in to have tea with various criminals and then casually arranged for a luncheon summit including two drug lords and two art forgers. How would he define the Osman brand? “The nice thing about having been on TV is people sort of know who I am – it would be quite hard to hide your true self over 14 years on telly,” he ventures. “So I think they know that I wish to make the world a slightly better place by any means necessary. That’s sort of the brand, I guess.” Let’s see what his critics make of that. But what about those imitators – the way that his success has launched a wave of novels in the same, whisper it, “cosy crime” vein, with covers to match? ( The Reverend Richard Coles’ are the most famous, but there are also the likes of A Spoonful of Murder by JM Hall and Ian Moor’s Death and Croissants.) Are his books doing well at the expense of other types of crime? “In terms of publishing genres, there’s always something,” Osman says. “When I started writing these books everything was a dark, psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator. So publishing just moves in whatever cycles that it wants to. But I only have one job and that is to write the book that I want to write, and write the book that I want to read.” Osman has created very engaging characters. He also has a sense of humour that shines through the work. I think he's pretty good at plotting too. The mystery is complex but not at all confusing. I loved that the bad guy who got away was a Canadian. Garth may be ruthless, but he was always polite about it.To avoid people dismissing him as a “celebrity author” – someone who gets published just because readers will recognise their name – he wrote his first book in secret, finishing the manuscript before his agent sent it to publishers. Does he still feel conflicted about that today? “Really, really not at all,” he says, a note of impatience in his voice (“celebrity author” is another loathed phrase). “I feared at the beginning that was going to be what people said, but I’ve literally never had anyone say it to me. People have been very accepting.” Richard Osman’s books are a slyly sophisticated bunch, boasting emotional development equal to the memorable mysteries. . .Thursday Murder Club mystery stands up well on its own, but given the richness of character and relationships, as a set, they’re bloody brilliant.” There's always something just out of reach. . . . Everyone chasing the thing they don't have. Going mad until they get it."

To Osman, though, crime fiction is doing “insanely well” at present. “I think that a rising tide raises all ships. The more I sell, the more crime fiction sells, is the truth,” he says, when I ask how it felt as a fledgling author to give writers like Lee Child, whom he’d presumably hero-worshipped as a crime fan, a run for their money. That’s the thing about Coopers Chase. You’d imagine it was quiet and sedate, like a village pond on a summer’s day. But in truth it never stops moving, it’s always in motion. And that motion is aging, and death, and love, and grief, and final snatched moments and opportunities grasped. The urgency of old age. There’s nothing that makes you feel more alive than the certainty of death.” This book was part of my birthday present to myself. Yesterday I decided that it was time to enjoy it. This makes two nights in a row that I have stayed up far too late reading, unusual for a woman who is often in bed before 10 p.m.The cast was a bit smaller this time but still had diverse and fascinating characters including an art forger, her comically psychotic Canadian husband, some drug runners, a couple museum experts, a victim of romance fraud, a brief return of Stephen’s friend, antiques dealer Kuldesh Sharma, imprisoned drug maven Connie, and of course, the eminently lovable Bogdan, along with detectives Donna, Chris and others. Narrator Fiona Shaw did a stellar job once again of voicing them all. Osman concocts a satisfyingly complex whodunit full of neat twists and wrong turns. But unlike most crime novelists, he ensures his book’s strength and momentum stem not from its plot or its thrills but rather its perfectly formed characters. Once again, the quartet of friends makes for delightful company… Heartwarming and enthralling. ‘They carried a kind of magic, the four of them,’ a policeman muses. That magic is still there in abundance.” The Last Devil to Die is equal parts well-plotted mystery, scintillating repartee and deep reflection on what it means to love and live.” They also have endless resources at their fingertips and an ever-expanding circle of useful associates (this time a computer expert has joined the handyman, KGB man and imprisoned drug dealer who already help them out). They just need to make a call or ask the right person. This may be unrealistic but it makes for a fascinating investigation – and because it is done with great good humour, we are willing to suspend our disbelief. 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.

The Thursday Murder Club comprises a rebellious quartet of pensioners, each with a past that makes them pretty good at solving the high volume of crimes that cross their path (their luxury Kent retirement village has a similar concentration of baddies as Midsomer). Our hero Elizabeth is an ex-spy, Joyce is a former nurse, Ron has fond memories of rabble rousing as a trade union activist and Ibrahim still dabbles in psychiatry.It's Boxing Day lunch at Cooper's Chase, a retirement village in South East England, where resident septuagenarians Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce learn about the murder of antiques dealer, Kuldesh Sharma, who also happens to be a friend of Stephen, Elizabeth's husband.

This series keeps getting BETTER and BETTER, and this time Richard Osman has combined a cozy mystery with some thoughtfully written sub plots which include the themes of “romance fraud” and “end of life decisions”. Certainly Osman's American publisher, Pamela Dorman, who runs her own imprint at Penguin Random House, had little idea of Osman's fame as a quiz show host when she won the US auction. She responded to Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim, and Ron in the way she had with Eleanor Oliphant, the titular character of Gail Honeyman's smash hit debut novel. The puzzle was fine, but it was about the people. Perhaps that’s because the study of popular culture and mass entertainment has been Osman's lifelong project, one that began in 1970 as the younger son of a single mother in West Sussex. While Mat, three years older, was perpetually obsessed with “being cool” (he later became the bassist for the Britpop band Suede and recently published his second novel), Richard had no such aspirations. Osman and I end the Zoom call a few minutes later. I'm still thinking about the last line in The Last Devil to Die, uttered by Joyce but equally an encapsulation of Osman's relationship with his readers: “I know it sounds silly, but I feel less alone when I write. So thank you for keeping me company, whoever you might be.”

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The strands of the plot multiply entertainingly and get tied together in the usual satisfying way… Osman serves up another delightful mystery.” There’s also a subplot about a romance scam. As someone who dealt with a mother taken in by one, I loved how the team dealt with it.