The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman, published in 2022 by Pamela Dorman Books, is another excellent installment in the Thursday Murder Club Mystery series that features a loveable geriatric group of friends living in a retirement community outside of London. Much like a book club, they hold weekly meetings and use some of their pre-retirement skills, Elizabeth Best, a former spy; Ron Ritchie, a longtime union organizer; Ibrahim Arif, an ex-psychiatrist; and Joyce Meadowcroft, a retired nurse, to solve cold murder cases. The group is called The Thursday Murder Club, and this review is about the 3rd book in the series.
Elizabeth has a lot on her plate, which includes her husband's dementia which seems to be worsening by the day. A new foe sends her threatening notes, makes threatening phone calls, and ultimately pays her a visit with a kill-or-be-killed demand. In addition, the cold case the group has committed to resolving is heating up. It is a decade old and relates to the murder of Bethany Waites, an investigative reporter about to crack a case of tax fraud wide open. But unfortunately, before Bethany can break the case, her car careens off a cliff, and her body is never found.
Never content to limit their research to online activities, the club members manage to wheedle their way into situations that give them access to Bethany's friends and colleagues, the chief constable that worked the case, a drug dealer the group previously put in jail, and wants to kill Ron as soon as she gets out, along with an assist by many other unsavory characters. But, of course, all this leads to a full schedule for this group of retirement village sleuths.
From the crafty Elizabeth, kind-hearted Joyce, brilliant Ibrahim, and the fussy but loyal Ron, this quartet of friends are the ones you want around when things go sideways. The Bullet That Missed is as suspenseful as it is entertaining. In other words, another great story from an author that knows how to write them.
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