Editors Reads Verdict
Osman's third Thursday Murder Club novel raises the personal stakes dramatically by pointing the threat directly at the Club members themselves. The ensemble remains irresistible, the plotting is the series' most confident, and the emotional notes — particularly around ageing and loss — are handled with real grace.
What We Loved
- The threat to the Club members raises stakes to a new level without losing the series' warmth
- The hitman Viktor is one of Osman's more rounded secondary characters
- The television journalism cold case is well-constructed and connects to the present plot elegantly
- Joyce's diary entries continue to be a masterclass in comic voice
Minor Drawbacks
- The plot's complexity demands more attention than the cozy format sometimes signals
- Some readers find the spy/thriller elements less appealing than the community-set mysteries
- The series' characteristic comfort makes truly threatening stakes difficult to fully establish
Key Takeaways
- → The most effective thriller threats are personal — endangering who the reader loves
- → Cold cases make for richer mysteries because the evidence has shifted and memories are unreliable
- → Ageing and loss can be handled with both humor and genuine emotional respect simultaneously
- → A villain who is humanized is more unsettling than a simple monster
- → Community — found family in retirement — is one of the series' quiet and serious arguments
| Author | Richard Osman |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Pamela Dorman Books |
| Pages | 368 |
| Published | September 15, 2022 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Cozy Mystery, Crime Fiction, Comedy |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Thursday Murder Club series readers and cozy mystery fans who want the series' humor and warmth intensified by genuinely elevated stakes. |
The Stakes Get Personal
The Thursday Murder Club began investigating cold cases out of boredom and intellectual pleasure. By the third novel, the investigations have had real consequences, and in The Bullet That Missed, the consequences include a hitman tasked with eliminating the Club itself.
The plot begins with the Club’s cold case of the week: Bethany Waites, a television journalist who died ten years ago in what was ruled an accident but that the Club quickly identifies as murder. The investigation into Bethany’s death pulls on threads that connect to people with very contemporary reasons to want those threads left alone.
Viktor
One of the novel’s more interesting moves is giving significant attention to the hitman hired to deal with the Club. Viktor is Eastern European, professionally experienced, and increasingly charmed against his will by the four people he’s supposed to eliminate. Osman develops him with enough specificity that the eventual interactions between Viktor and the Club become genuinely funny and slightly touching, which is a difficult tonal balance that he manages surprisingly well.
Joyce’s Diaries
The series’ running device of Joyce keeping a diary about the investigations continues to be one of its greatest pleasures. Her voice — curious, warm, gently clueless about approximately half of what’s going on — is an ideal narrator for the cozier aspects of the stories. Osman uses the diary sections to deliver information, comedy, and emotional warmth simultaneously.
The diary has accumulated enough history by the third book that callbacks to earlier entries produce genuine affection in readers who have been with the series from the beginning.
Ageing as Subtext
Across the three books, Osman has been doing something quietly serious about ageing: using the Club’s situation — brilliant, vital, experienced people in a retirement community — to make an argument about what society misses when it stops paying attention to people after a certain age. The murders give them purpose; the investigations give them relevance. The books are very funny, but they are also, underneath, about the desire to remain active and counted.
Our rating: 4.3/5 — The Thursday Murder Club at the height of its confidence, with its warmest character work and most personal stakes yet.
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