THE BULLET THAT MISSED (2022)
By Richard Osman
Random House, 352 pages.
★★★★
The Bullet That Missed is book three of the delightful Thursday Murder Club Mystery series. Anyone who loves British eccentricity at its quirky best will delight in any of them, though the first book and this one are stronger than book two.
To recap, the Thursday Murder Club meets in the old-age home of Cooper’s Chase. Its principal geezers are former MI6 agent Elizabeth Best, her proper-goes-cockeyed friend Joyce Meadowcroft, former union tough guy Ron Ritchie, and gentle retired psychologist Ibrahim Arif. They like to reexamine old murder cases and are so successful that local cops Chris Hudson and Donna DeFreitas have become fans and give aid when they can get away with it. Bogdan Jankowski, an immigrant with a shadowy past, is another conspirator. He is having a torrid affair with Donna. Ron, on the other hand, is enjoying carnal relations with Pauline, a makeup artist. Everyone, it seems, has a hidden secret or two.
This time they take on the disappearance and presumed murder of TV personality Bethany Waites, chosen partly because Joyce has a girl crush on Bethany’s former co-anchor, Mike Waghorn whom she religiously watches. His show, South East Tonight, might remind locals of light fare daytime human interest shows around Western Massachusetts. Joyce will get to know Mike, but let’s just say they are not a romantic match.
People get killed in this series, but relationships and the writing are so offbeat that sanguinary activity falls into the category of black comedy. For example, their investigations send Ibrahim to visit the deeply immoral and dangerous Connie Johnson (from book two) and Ibrahim makes this observation: “He likes Connie; and she likes him. Although one has to be careful: she is a ruthless killer and, without wishing to be judgmental about it, that is fairly bad.” Yes indeed. She’s running drugs, contraband, and hits from her jail cell and is given privileges from prison personnel for whom she scores cheap electronics and other such favors.
Dangerous silliness shows elsewhere. There is Henrik, an inept Swedish thug who tries to get Elizabeth to kill a former Russian spy named Viktor. That gives her pause as Viktor was once one of her lovers, but what can she do? Henrik has tracked everyone and threatens to kill Joyce if Elizabeth doesn’t off Viktor. There is Andrew Everson, the chief constable of Kent, who is more productive in writing crime novels than catching transgressors. Bethany’s on-the-air replacement Fiona Clemence seems to be disagreeable, but does that mean she had a role in Bethany’s disappearance?
Osman resorts to all manner of devices to spin his yarn such as anagrams, priceless old books, missing money from an old heist, and SIM cards. But Elizabeth keeps coming back to the lack of a body and attempts to identify what good guys and bad guys alike have overlooked. As we learned from the first two books, although Elizabeth is fearless and can be ruthless, some of her instincts retired when she did. She and her Cooper’s Chase peers are, after all, in their 70s. Their specialty is getting criminals to misjudge them.
Will the Murder Club solve Bethany’s disappearance? Of course, but the fun lies in the twisted paths taken to get there, not the gory details. I roared at parts of this book as if I were watching a Monty Python sketch. Know anyone who likes off-kilter mysteries and loves British foibles and aberrations? Stick this one on your holiday list and be ready to field telephone calls from the recipient who wants to read to you their favorite zany quotes. Best to read it yourself first, so you can head them off at the pass. Or at least exchange notes.
Rob Weir
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