A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
The Bullet That Missed
Richard Osman
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Other reviews in this series can be found here.
Fuck. I’m starting to like Connie Johnson.
I suppose nothing should surprise me at this point in this series, which has already talked me into shipping Donna/Bogdan like it’s my job and mostly got me to overlook Elizabeth’s ethical transgressions. They still bother me, but I pose myself the same question I asked with Addie LaRue: what are ethics compared to eternity (or, in this case, looming death)? The answer is nothing at all. We are a speck in the cosmos and our passing will go completely unnoticed, and when you look at it that way I suppose it doesn’t really matter much if Elizabeth competently interferes with a few police cases in which she no longer has any real authority. I mean, at the very least she and her friends solve those cases, so we can’t say she doesn’t get results. All of this is code for This-Book-Gave-Me-Such-Bad-Thursday-Murder-Club-Hangover-That-I-Started-Book-Four-The-Day-After-I-Finished-Book-Three-And-I-Regret-Nothing.
This third installment of the (presumed) final years of the Thursday Murder Club and its four indefatigable members picks up right before Christmas, which is duly celebrated by the residents of Coopers Chase, except Mervyn, who is a pill. (We’ll get to Mervyn in the next book.) There’s plenty of cheer to go around: Ron discovers a mutual attraction with Pauline Jenkins, a sixty(ish)-year-old makeup artist, and begins a sweetly relaxing relationship with her, while PC Madonna “Donna” De Freitas has been having the time of her life with her new boyfriend, the morally gray but very attractive Bogdan Jankowski. Bogdan is apparently a first-timer – at least according to him, and I see no reason to doubt him – but also has no qualms about trampling a children’s laser tag party (BOGDAN THAT IS NOT OKAY), which combination proves irresistible, and their relationship skyrockets from there, though they try to keep it secret from their nosy friends. These nosy friends include DCI Chris Hudson, nominally Donna’s boss, who has been dating her mother Patrice since the end of book one and is so in love with her that he has already bought a ring for a so far theoretical proposal, and they also include the entire Thursday Murder Club. Ironically, Elizabeth’s husband Stephen – suffering from worsening dementia – is completely in the know, as he was the one who encouraged Bogdan to ask Donna for a date in the first place.
Anyway, as usual Elizabeth is the one with the problem, because she and Stephen are kidnapped after a rash of threatening anonymous texts and taken to a mansion in Staffordshire, where they are greeted by a six-foot Swede who is immediately dubbed “the Viking” by Stephen. While Stephen ogles the Viking’s extensive and stunningly expensive library, the Viking himself tries to threaten Elizabeth into assassinating Viktor Illyich, a former KGB colonel known as “the Bullet,” who has since gone freelance and in fact was the owner of the diamonds Elizabeth pocketed after their last adventure. Unfortunately for the (young, inexperienced, and rather clueless) Viking, Elizabeth and Viktor have been besties for decades, and neither has any interest in killing the other. Faced with Elizabeth’s unflappable refusal, the Viking resorts to threatening to kill Joyce if Viktor Illyich is not murdered within the next couple of weeks, then finally releases Elizabeth and Stephen by a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, per Elizabeth’s own suggestion. Bogdan picks them up, no questions asked, and they return to Coopers Chase with a substantial quandary.
Eventually Elizabeth makes her decision and brings Joyce along on a fake assassination, which ends with them bringing Viktor home with them in a duffel bag (alive, I should mention). Viktor cheerfully settles into hiding in Joyce’s flat and easily makes friends with Alan, her dog, but the anxiety-ridden Viking checks Elizabeth’s work and realizes she faked Viktor’s death. With nothing else for it, the now irate Viking makes his way to Coopers Chase with the intention of murdering Joyce, but he is foiled by his own queasiness and makes the mistake of accepting a cup of tea laced with Viktor’s sleeping tablets, which knock him out in seconds. He wakes up tied to a chair and surrounded by old people, among them a surprisingly cogent Stephen, who has been looking into the Viking’s library contents with the help of old friend and antiquarian Kuldesh Sharma. With that information firmly in hand, Stephen correctly identifies the Viking as Henrik Mikael Hansen of Norrköping, born 1989, son of a pastry chef and a librarian. Henrik vows bloody vengeance against them all but deflates when Pauline threatens to murder him if Ron so much as wakes up with a cough, and, realizing that he’s just not meant to be a psychopath, agrees to help the Thursday Murder Club with their current case. (As for why he wanted poor Viktor dead in the first place: it was all about the money. It usually is.)
Meanwhile, the rest of the club inveigles Mike Waghorn, beloved host of South East Tonight, into gracing Coopers Chase with his presence. His stated purpose is to interview Ron (which is in fact the reason Ron needs a makeup artist), but the club has a secret agenda: Joyce has pushed them into looking into the murder of Bethany Waites, Mike’s former co-host, who disappeared in 2013 after her car was pushed over a cliff. By Joyce’s reasoning, the case will get solved and Joyce will get to meet Mike, so win-win all around. (Joyce is also currently in romantic pursuit of nicely-eyebrowed newcomer Mervyn Collins, who seems completely oblivious to her campaign – she’s a busy lass.) It has always been assumed that Bethany was killed after getting too deep into a story about VAT fraud, but the evidence has been sorely lacking, and the only person to get arrested for the scheme was a woman named Heather Garbutt, who is on the cusp of finishing her sentence. Fortuitously and very suspiciously, Bethany was replaced on South East by former producer Fiona Clemence, who is now so famous that her origins have been all but forgotten. Fortunately for the club, Mike has been quietly mourning Bethany for the last decade, and – after a few glasses of red – he cheerfully volunteers her as the club’s next study subject, then cooperates with them as they begin their investigation.
By happy coincidence, Heather Garbutt happens to be in the same prison that hosts Connie Johnson, so Ibrahim visits Connie and persuades her to investigate Heather. Initially suspicious, Connie finds the case intriguing enough to sign up, and also hires Ibrahim as her regular therapist. The trail seems to hit a wall when Heather is later found dead in her cell with a note begging Connie for help, but Connie pulls a few strings and manages to find a poem written by Heather and hidden in one of the legs of her desk chair. Ibrahim’s prison visit also draws the interest of Chief Constable Andrew Everton, boss of Chris and Donna and writer of semi-autobiographical police thrillers – so far only available on Kindle, but he’s working on getting them in front of anyone who might be interested in turning them into a show. Though he tries to maintain control, Andrew gradually finds himself drawn into the orbit of the Thursday Murder Club, and eventually ends up digging up a backyard with them in search of Bethany’s body. Separate from the case but slightly apropos, Mike Waghorn invites Chris to join South East Tonight as a regular guest; Chris deliriously accepts, only to be unceremoniously replaced by Donna when Mike realizes she is more attractive than Chris. (Chris is crushed, but he still shows up for Donna – what a man.)
After threatening notes, red herrings, and suspicious people aplenty, the Thursday Murder Club convenes at Henrik’s Staffordshire mansion as he meets with Andrew Everton, of all people, who desperately needs someone to help him find the proceeds of the VAT fraud he ran with the help of Heather Garbutt and her boss, Jack Mason (now deceased because Andrew killed him). The gleeful club members watch from the next room as Henrik secretly livestreams the meeting through Fiona Clemence’s Instagram account (with Fiona’s full consent), sending Andrew’s confession all over the globe in a matter of seconds. Mike Waghorn makes an appearance to host the end of the livestream, and he gives a loving tribute to Bethany while Andrew is arrested. The perennially arrogant Andrew believes he will serve a cursory sentence and then get off on the murder charges due to lack of evidence; however, Chris finds irrefutable DNA proof pointing to Andrew as the murderer of Jack Mason. Ironically, the publishing world is now tossing Andrew’s Kindle books into the printing press, and they are set to become an actual show. Andrew himself, of course, will not see a penny of the proceeds until he pays back the £10M he stole. On the other hand, Joyce is now set up with a functional cryptocurrency account thanks to Henrik, and is enjoying the ins and outs of the industry; and, thanks to Andrew, she is also now an aspiring crime fiction writer.
Halfway across the world, Bethany Waites – now calling herself Alice Cooper, completely by design – has set up shop in Dubai as a media and PR consultant and is completely unrecognizable thanks to the plastic surgery she bought with the money stolen by Andrew, Jack, and Heather. She misses Mike and keeps tabs on him through the internet, but so far has not made contact, beyond the simple messages she sends him anonymously every year on the anniversary of her “death.” Having learned quite a bit about money laundering through her investigations, she chose to fake her own death and disappear when Andrew sent her a bullet with Mike’s name engraved on it. Mike himself half believes these anonymous emails are from Bethany, though he also fully believes this is impossible. Still, they give him some hope. The case closes – or does it? – with Elizabeth, suspicious as always, pondering a visit to Dubai with Viktor. Back in prison, Connie muses on the note she faked when she learned of Heather’s death, which actually was a suicide, and hopes to use it to get out of prison sooner than expected. Oh, and Donna’s stint with South East bears unexpected fruit when she catches bitter producer Carwyn Price slipping a threatening note into her bag after she refuses a date with him, of the kind that used to turn up in Bethany’s and Fiona’s bags when they were still co-hosting, and slaps him with threatening behavior charges.
First things first: writing, past and present tense, bad editing, etc, etc. No, it hasn’t gotten any better, and, no, I really wasn’t expecting it to. Now that that’s out of the way, this book still got the full five stars because it is my very favorite Thursday Murder Club book thus far. As always, I love the feisty retirees, though I am unhappy that Stephen’s dementia has progressed to the point where he has begun to forget his love of chess. It was nice to see him so active in this book, however, even taking a trip down to Kuldesh’s shop with Bogdan’s help. I love his steadfast faith in Elizabeth, his ability to keep calm even when they’re both bashed in the head and tossed into the back of a van. I love that the books are the first thing he looks at when the blindfold comes off in the Viking’s library, I mean, I feel so seen. And ultimately, of course, it is the books that lead to Henrik’s identification, which makes perfect sense because that is exactly how I would get caught if I got into money laundering. I too would get caught happily slapping my real name on a purchase of a first edition of The Wind in the Willows, god help me.
Regarding the new characters: I fully expect to see Henrik and Viktor back for future adventures, this is not optional in the slightest, I will be taking attendance. I feel like I shouldn’t be this fond of an ex-KGB colonel, but here we are, because Viktor is a sweet bean who suffers from the kind of loneliness that comes with money and age and I want him to move into Coopers Chase and have happy times with his new best friends. Henrik makes me laugh with his boneheaded Millennial-coded naïveté, but he also slightly triggers my protective reflex because he is just. So. SWEET. You can stop waving that gun around, sweets, you’re not fooling anybody. His best moment comes during his first-ever attempted murder, when he very sweetly and very seriously helps Joyce straighten out her budding cryptocurrency account, despite the fact that he came to her flat to kill her. He tries to be all big and bad, but he is such a squeamish cinnamon roll that he finds himself unable to slaughter a 77-year-old woman. He can’t even bring himself to kill her dog, though he ponders the necessity of such during his journey to Joyce’s flat (and is then relieved that he doesn’t have to, what a love). I love that he caves the minute Pauline puts him in his place. I love it even more that he subconsciously chooses Joyce’s motorcycle mug for tea but scoffs at himself for falling into such an obvious stereotype, even as he tries to look like an Alpha Boi. Obviously it’s not great that he was trying to project psychopathic vibes to the point of showing up at an old lady’s flat with a gun, but he’s so bad at it that I can’t really hold it against him.
I would also like to see more of Mike Waghorn, slightly to my own surprise. In the beginning he comes across as an arrogant TV exec of the kind who likes to cherry-pick his favorite parts of Buddhism while ignoring the foundational principles – which, to be clear, he is – but he also quickly reveals a softer, more thoughtful side. I’m glad that he does. It was surprisingly moving to see his genuine affection for Bethany, whose brash youth pulled him out of the shell built for him by his own generation. It was so nice that their relationship was kind and loving without being romantic, especially when he literally is old enough to be her father. I especially love that she is the reason he started coming out to his nearest and dearest, because she taught him that he had nothing to hide. I sincerely hope there is a tearful reunion somewhere in their future. Even if she ran off on him without a word, she had her reasons, and they are heartbreaking. Now that Andrew is in Belmarsh and Jack and Heather are dead, maybe it’ll be safe for them to meet again. That being said, I wouldn’t say no to seeing more of Andrew, though he’d better stay in prison. His authorial escapades are hilarious and relatable, particularly as he anxiously seeks validation from everyone who comes into contact with his books, however tangentially; likewise his desire to move to a picturesque location and write full-time. Same, Andrew. Same.
Regarding the old regulars: I LOVE DONNA AND BOGDAN EVEN MORE THAN I THOUGHT I WOULD OMFG. I love Chris and Patrice. I love Ron and Pauline. I love them all. Give me all the wondrous romance. I never thought I’d say any of those words in that order, but Donna and Bogdan are unstitching me. They are my OTP, I will die on this hill. Are all these budding relationships a little too instantly perfect? Sure. Do I care? Not a whit. Romantic drama is not the thrust of this series, for which I am duly grateful. It is wonderful to watch Donna and Chris thrive: they’ve just received a commendation during the Kent Police Awards for their apprehension of Connie Johnson, and Chris is now regularly eating salmon and broccoli and skipping the KitKats and chips, and he is so close to having abs, and he is loving every second of it. Bless Patrice, and bless Donna for bringing the two of them together. If he doesn’t propose by the end of the next book, I am going to kick him. Donna is also making strides in her health – mental, in her case – and for now has broken a supremely unhealthy dating cycle, and I just love that for her. I love the sweetness of her relationship with Bogdan; it’s still early, but he already loves her so much that he was ready to splash out on an antique statue that she happened to like. (In the end he pays a single pound for it in spite of the original £2,000 price tag, because Kuldesh turns out to be a romantic. I like Kuldesh too and I wish he could’ve hung around more, but I already know that he dies.)
Regarding Connie Johnson: she did slightly annoy me in the end when she admitted to destroying Heather’s suicide note and replacing it with a note of her own, purely in self-service of course, but I wouldn’t expect anything different from her. I found her hilarious in the last book as she tried every measure she could think of to get Bogdan’s attention (and failed hideously), but in this book she is slightly more thoughtful. Engaging Ibrahim as her therapist was an important first step. Even if she still hasn’t let go of her vendetta against Bogdan and Ron, I have faith in Ibrahim, and I am hoping Connie will eventually grow into something other than what she is right now. I feel she will move in a positive direction; even after she accuses Ibrahim of being a fraud, she chooses to continue their sessions. I am low-key hoping Elizabeth will also avail herself of Ibrahim’s services in a future book: in this book we got a glimpse of her relationship with her physically abusive father, and suffice it to say I am not happy. I want everybody to be nice to my Lizzie girl.
Long story short, this book got me fully committed to the series as a whole, and I am 55 pages into The Last Devil to Die as of this writing and loving it a lot. I will be buying the fifth book and watching the movie. (Remember when I said I’d only be collecting this series on Kindle? Neither do I. It was nice while it lasted.) I may not approve of his loose approach to conjugation, but Osman so far has been a kind, thoughtful storyteller, and I can’t get enough of the world of Coopers Chase, nor the characters who inhabit it. Fuck my earlier reservations about gimmicks and series longevity, I want these old ass goobers to live to at least 200, I want them to solve at least 500 more murders, and I want Joyce to finally choose a man who is worthy of her. No matter how much she thirsts for his eyebrows, I have a feeling that that man is not Mervyn.
