The Bullet that Missed, the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series, is deserving of its nomination for Best Mystery & Thriller in the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards. Set in Coopers Chase, an English retirement community as lively as a frat house, four sharp-as-tacks septuagenarians—Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Ron, and Joyce—spend their golden years solving crimes that leave the local police scratching their heads.
In this installment, our geriatric sleuths delve into the decade-old disappearance of a TV journalist, Bethany Waites, who vanished while sniffing around a money-laundering scheme. It’s not long before our heroes find themselves tangled in a web of two murders separated by a decade. To thicken the plot, Elizabeth’s old KGB nemesis, Viktor, emerges as a suspect, and a Viking threatens to send Joyce to Valhalla unless Elizabeth eliminates Viktor. The race is on to catch the villain before the crime scene tape is rolled out again.
The narrative is punctuated by the poignant realities of aging, including the heartbreaking progression of a character’s dementia. Yet, the witty banter and high jinks of our senior detectives provide plenty of laughs, proving that age is just a number when it comes to solving mysteries. My advice: forego the audiobook for the print version—the narration didn’t do the story justice. And here’s a cherry on top: Spielberg has optioned the series! 5 stars.
** Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy of the book. The opinions expressed are wholly my own.