Books: The Last Devil to Die (The Thursday Murder Club #4) by Richard Osman

“It's Boxing Day lunch at Cooper's Chase, where our resident septuagenarians Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce learn about the murder of antiques dealer, Kuldesh Sharma (who had a cameo in the previous book), who also happens to be a friend of Stephen, Elizabeth's husband. Of course, DCI Chris Hudson and Donna were determined to keep the members of the Thursday Murder Club out of their current murder investigation, but this proving hard to do. They’re quickly, however, get drawn into the dangerous world of drug dealers, art forgery and antiques. As the team investigates, Chris and Donna find themselves off the case, replaced by someone up the chain of command, which implies to them that there is more going on than anyone thought. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and her dementia suffering husband Stephen have come to a crossroad and nothing will be the same again.”

As The Thursday Murder Club further expands its caseloads beyond the confines of Copper’s Chase, including adding (and saying goodbye) to recurring characters, it comes to a natural breakpoint with The Last Devil To Die. A more emotional entry in the series, author Richard Osman still gives up a complex mystery, a dark look into some antique dealers business where forgery, deception, and murder seem to be the routine. We also get a B plot involving a lonely fellow resident, Mervyn, who has become the target of an online romance scam, and who refuses to believe his Tatiana is fictitious.

 

Despite some dark things (and a lot of death), Osman continues to give these wonderful characters a sense of humor. There are some laugh-out-loud moments, ones that are needed, mostly as the medical issues of Stephen and the couple’s solution to his dementia is a gut punch (and I wonder if there will be residual effects in later volumes). So goofy-fun Joyce steps up during a good portion of the operation, with Bogdan also playing a bigger, yet sympathetic role and Ibrahim also proves a vital part to play in the Murder Club's investigations.

 

While everything sort gets tied up neatly, there are a few dangling plot threads, but a fifth volume will be on the way –probably in late 2025- as Osman began a new series this year, We Solve Murders, with new characters and settings. Which means I’ll not read it until 2026. 

Books: The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt (2023)

“Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.”

Most of the novel is taken up with Comet’s past, with only a small part set in 2005/2006, where we learn of his adventures as an unhappy runaway child during the last days of the Second World War, of his true love that is stolen away, and pride and purpose he finds as a career librarianist. What sustains the novel is Bob, who is sort of a straight man surrounded by a number of outsized people like Connie and Ethan – and the ones in the retirement home, as well as June and Ida, who we see in the latter half of the book (and characters straight out of Dickens).

The Librarianist is, perhaps, deWitt’s most accessible novel, though it’s more prone to clichés of the genre than previous tales. I can identify a lot with Bob, an introvert, as well. Still, I found the book effective, with its dark humor and compassion little seen in today’s fiction;  a moving and delightful character study that is warmhearted with a likable hero.