The Bullet That Missed: (The Thursday Murder Club 3)

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The new book begins with the shooting of Kuldesh Sharma, the genial 80-year-old antiques dealer who gave the Club some valuable assistance in the previous volume, The Bullet That Missed. A new mystery is afoot in the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series from million-copy bestselling author Richard Osman. I would only add on a personal note that it’s a particular challenge to read this book while attempting a sugar-free diet. As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, the members of the Thursday Murder Club start to ingratiate themselves with key players in the case.

Ever so ambitious,” Joyce remarks, “but they only use ‘ambitious’ as a criticism about women, don’t they?

The Man Who Died Twice” picked up where its predecessor left off and proved to be another skillfully constructed and brilliantly entertaining tale packed with intrigue, humor and adventure.

Kuldesh’s murder kickstarts an Elmore Leonard-esque caper plot in which various ­interested ­parties compete to get their hands on a consignment of heroin that had been in his care, resulting in a string of violent deaths alternating with comic set-pieces. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is presented with a deadly mission: kill or be killed and while she grapples with this latest dilemma, her conscience and a gun - the gang and their new friends unravel a new mystery.He is a much-loved TV personality whose company is enjoyed by an enormous number of people, many of whom chuckle “You’re absolutely right, Richard” at least 17 times a week.

Even when an armed and angry New York mafioso turns up, no reader need worry that Joyce or Elizabeth will accidentally receive a fatal crossfire bullet to the head. This storyline marks the series’s transition from quietly poignant to deeply moving, with Osman giving us some of his best writing yet as Elizabeth’s ­situation prompts the other Club members to reflect on their own griefs and lost loves, with one ­character disclosing some sad secrets. A local news legend is on the hunt for an exciting new headline and our Thursday Murder Club favourites are soon on the trail of two murders that occurred ten years apart. His first three novels, The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and The Bullet That Missed were multi-million-copy record-breaking bestsellers around the world. It’s this self-awareness that grounds Osman’s characters, and makes us look forward to seeing them again.The new book wastes no time allowing time to pass, which is sensible, yet we feel that things have moved on. What couldn’t have been predicted about Osman’s books was that they would sell quite so phenomenally well, or be so good.

But when a local builder turns up dead, the 70-something sleuths find themselves grappling with their first live case — one with “a real corpse, and somewhere out there, a real killer. I managed to steel myself to all the Twixes, but the throwaway reference to chocolate fingers on p284 nearly broke me.A plan to thwart all of these bad people – and dole out the correct amount of violent retribution to each – requires the full measure of Elizabeth’s genius, but of course she manages it all, while at the same time (here’s the clever part) raising none of the usual concomitant risks of going mano a mano with dangerous criminals. Two years ago, Richard Osman’s “ The Thursday Murder Club” introduced four unlikely, yet immensely likable, amateur detectives. What is clear after reading both novels is that Osman is a very much a one-trick pony, whose trademark is subverting expectations about the elderly in a series of attention-grabbing asides," wrote Joan Smith in the Times last year. Clearly no other novelist ­working today can come up with anything to match the pleasure of spending time with Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron as they pore over the details of unsolved murders in the Jigsaw room at Coopers Chase retirement village. However, every now and then, Osman offsets the frivolity with pathos, not least when Elizabeth watches her husband, Stephen, slide further into the dark depths of dementia.