One Thursday afternoon in the seniors' center, a decade-old cold case --their favorite kind-- leads the Thursday Murder Club to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers. A new foe they call "Viking", wants Elizabeth to kill former KGB chief Viktor, or he will kill her sweet best friend Joyce. Activist marked for death Ron and psychiatrist Ibrahim chase clues for Viking's identity, and investigate mob-queen prisoner from last book.
This third adventure ranges from a prison cell with espresso machine to a luxury penthouse with swimming pool high in the sky.

My Review:

How far would you go to save your best friend’s life? What lengths would you go to? Perhaps a better question would be to ask what lengths wouldn’t you go to? Because that is certainly one of the big questions at the heart of The Bullet That Missed.

First, there’s a cold case, because that’s what the Thursday Murder Club does in its Thursday meetings – it investigates cold cases.

The case they pick this time is close to home, both in time and in distance. Ten years ago, a young reporter disappeared, and has been presumed dead for most of a decade. Bethany Waites was working on a huge story about smuggling cell phones and tax fraud. Millions of pounds disappeared so thoroughly into the labyrinth of money laundering that the money was never found. Which didn’t stop the police from sending one of the perpetrators went to jail for it, while the likely instigator managed to stay out of legal trouble – most likely by doing something else seriously illegal.

But the reporter left her apartment one night, her car was found on the shore bloodied but empty after having been pushed over a cliff, and the woman was never seen again. She’s still much missed, by her friends, her colleagues, and most especially her mentor who never got over her death.

One of the seemingly trivial issues surrounding that very non-traditional event was that the young, female reporter was receiving nasty little threatening messages dropped in her purse, left on her desk and even stuck to her car.

Just as Elizabeth Best is receiving ten years later, although the messages Elizabeth is receiving are much more specifically life threatening rather than the job-threatening ‘mean-girl’ type messages Bethany was getting.

A mysterious personage has threatened Elizabeth that if she doesn’t kill a particular former KGB agent, both Elizabeth and her best friend Joyce will be killed instead. Joyce first, of course, so that Elizabeth has time to reflect on the folly of her (non) actions.

But the man that the mysterious criminal Elizabeth ends up calling “the Viking”, because he very much resembles one wants so very, very dead, is also a friend. An old and dear friend who Elizabeth would very much like to save as she doesn’t have many of those around – not just anymore but ever.

The cases don’t really intersect when Elizabeth and company get involved in them. They really, really don’t. But, and it turns out to be a big, huge, but, ten years isn’t all that long ago, especially in a small town like Cooper’s Chase.

Because all of the players for the cold case are still around for the fresh case. All except one.

Escape Rating A-: There are two ways of looking at the adventures of the Thursday Murder Club. On the one hand, the mostly fun side of the equation, there are the murder cases that seem to find their way to the club’s door – even if Elizabeth has to push them in that direction more than a bit. And sometimes they push back – as the Viking’s part of this entry in the series does.

But then there’s the much more serious side, the one that can be summed up as “old age is not for sissies’. Because it isn’t and they aren’t and none of them are remotely planning to go gentle into that good night no matter how hard some people – including Elizabeth’s oldest and dearest enemies – try to shove them in that direction. With a surprising amount of extreme prejudice.

Then again, one does get the impression that Elizabeth Best is the spiritual sister of Hetty Lang from NCIS: LA and Victoria Winslow, the character that Helen Mirren played in the movies RED and RED 2.

But seriously, the mystery – in spite of or because of the increasing number of victims – is the fun part of the story. It’s also the part that changes most from book to book in a series.

The real reason that people keep coming back to any particular mystery series over and over again (this is book 3 in this series already, after The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice) is because we get involved with the lives of the ‘Scooby gang’ that does the solving of the murders and not so much the murders themselves.

So what makes the Thursday Murder Club work as a series is the way that it revolves around and utilizes the strengths and weaknesses of the members of the club. The particular charm of this series is that it neither shies away from the issues of aging nor does it turn the idea of septuagenarians successfully solving crimes into anything twee or cutesy. (If you remember the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman, that got both cutesy and twee over the course of its run.)

The members of the Thursday Murder Club are also all dealing with loss (realistically but differently according to each of their personalities), either in the past or the present, but are still very much living in the here and now – and dealing successfully with it – something we don’t see nearly enough.

I was tempted to say something like ‘they still have a lot to give’ which doesn’t convey the right sentiment because it implies they’re an exception to some rule in the same way that telling a woman she doesn’t look her age may be intended as a compliment but actually reinforces the idea that looking whatever age she is isn’t good enough – when it should be.

I’d say that Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron have always had a lot to give and have never stopped giving it. While giving readers a terrific mystery to savor along the way.

Speaking of which, they have one more mystery to give us this year. The Last Devil to Die will be out later this month. And it’s already on my reading calendar because I can’t wait!

It's the following Thursday.
Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.
As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn't that be a bonus?
But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can The Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?

My Review:

The Thursday Murder Club series is not merely a guilty pleasure of a read, it’s just the kind of guilty pleasure you feel when you filch some of the semi-sweet chips straight out of the bag while baking chocolate chip cookies. You know you’re not really supposed to, but they taste so good, sweet with just the right amount of bitter in the aftertaste that you can’t resist – and you can’t eat (or read) just one.

This series is the same, with its story of murders in a retirement community solved by the skills, the talent and especially the combined experience of the 70something residents, who live in a place where the appearance of an ambulance screaming through the streets is an everyday occurrence – and that the next time it might be for one of them.

We first met the members of the Thursday Murder Club in the book of the same title, as the four septuagenarians who solved Cold Cases as a hobby found themselves in the middle of a fresh case right on their doorstep.

At the end of which, their ‘leader’ Elizabeth Best received a letter informing her that a man she thought was very, very dead was not only alive but back in her life, followed by the virtual ‘mic drop’ of the book’s end.

In The Man Who Died Twice we get the full story behind that mysterious missive, a story that wends its way back to Elizabeth’s days in the spy game, combined with her personal past in the form – and eventually the body – of her ex-husband and fellow retired spy Douglas Middlemiss. (I’m sure there’s a pun in his name, but I’m not quite getting there. Or it could be one of the many, many tasty red herrings that abound throughout this story.)

Dear Old Doug needs a safe house and protection from the mob. And he wants one more chance with Elizabeth, who was most likely the love of his life even though the reverse was absolutely not true. But then, Doug always believed he was a bigger hit with the ladies than he actually was then – let alone now.

He may not have a chance with Elizabeth, but he really does need that safe house and he knows she’s still damn good at the game even if she acts like she’s no longer playing it. Although the number of favors she called in during the first book call that into question – and so does the agency she used to work for.

The thing is that Doug really did steal £20,000 in diamonds from the New York mafia by way of their, let’s call him their escrow agent and insurance broker, in Britain. There really are assassins, and that’s definitely plural, out to get both him and the diamonds. It’s not personal, it’s just business.

Whether it was a successful business or not is an entirely different question. At first it looks like at least one set of assassins succeeded, but the clues that Doug left his ex-wife about where he stashed the diamonds make it seem like maybe they didn’t.

And Doug has form for that, leading the Thursday Murder Club on a merry chase to figure out who done what to whom. Just in case that the old spy had one last game in him after all.

Escape Rating A-: I started this book back when it came out in 2021, but bounced off it for some reason that I absolutely cannot remember nearly two years later. The reason I can’t remember is that when I picked it up this weekend, I absolutely could not put it down. So whatever it was, it must have been both a ‘me’ thing and a ‘then’ thing, because this cozy-ish, thriller-ish mystery was a whole lot of fun.

What makes the Thursday Murder Club so much fun is the way that the members of this little gang both are and are very much not exactly what they appear to be. They are all in their 70s, they have all lost a step or two physically, but often fewer steps than people assume from their age. And they all have hidden depths AND hidden assets that they are able to bring to bear to protect their friends and each other – and to help Elizabeth take care of the secret business she was never supposed to tell anyone about – but did anyway.

Part of the fun of this particular entry in the series is the way that Elizabeth’s adversary is also her mirror, a woman very much like herself who has also made her way into the upper echelons of the spy agencies, who came up through the ranks hearing about the ‘great Liz Best’ and wanted to best her at her own game. The way they work both in concert and in opposition, as each tries to ‘win’ a game that was never a contest, is fascinating to watch even as it throws so very many red herrings out of the basket and into the plot.

The ‘B’ plot of this book (and these do have an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ plot like a TV series that I wouldn’t be surprised to see come out of the BBC one of these days) is even closer to home as one of the Club members is attacked, and the Club pulls out all the stops to make it as right as they can – all the while acknowledging that at their age not everything can be put right, that they can only do the best they can.

But there is a touch of bitter mixed into the sweet of a good caper well solved and justice being righteously served, and that’s in the real identity of ‘the man who lived twice’. A revelation that has nothing to do with the spy game and everything to do with being all too human.

The Thursday Murder Club series continued with last year’s The Bullet that Missed, and I’ll be reading that sometime in the next few weeks so that I can catch up with the series in time for The Last Devil to Die, arriving – and apparently dying, late next month.