Book review: The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

“…every bit as good as the previous books…”

The fourth novel in the Thursday Murder Club series continues our love affair with these wonderful characters. I’ll say right now that you should not read it if you have not read and enjoyed the previous three books. This is not a series where you can just pick up anywhere along the way and enjoy. This story relies on you knowing and loving the pensioner detectives and their friends.

I will also give a spoiler in that, if you were paying attention, there’s definitely a few loose ends that are not tidied away at the end of this book and that, I feel, is deliberate. I’m fairly certain Richard Osman will be referencing events and murders from this story in his next novel (and I will let you know when I have finished reading it).

I don’t want to give too much away about the plot so I will just say the book begins with the murder of a dear friend to at least some members of the club and a hunt for a massive shipment of drugs ensues. Along the way, new friends (and enemies) are made and some – very, very sadly – are taken from us.

There’s little more I can say other than if you love this series of books, then this fourth instalment will not disappoint. It is every bit as good as the previous books. Osman is one of the very few detective fiction writers I have any interest in and the fact that he has captured both my attention and my loyalty is due simply to his ability to write wonderful, loving and very human characters. Bar the odd psychopath or two (and sometimes even then), if you’re British then you know people like Osman’s characters and you might even see parts of yourself in some of them.

As always, you may or may not guess who did what and why, but it doesn’t matter a jot. I guessed a very significant end reveal from the moment it was first mentioned and I was simply very satisfied when the reveal came and I could be smug about it. I did not guess anything else correctly and I’m fine with that too. I would be surprised if anyone is reading these books because they are hooked on murder mysteries. We’re reading them because we just love the people who populate the stories.

Osman has this amazing knack of making us come to like even the bad guys, or at least sympathise with them to an extent. You have the feeling that in his fictional worlds, everyone ends up being friends with everyone else. That’s no bad thing in a world going to pot currently. The Thursday Murder Club books are very much what I would call ‘Sunday evening light entertainment’. Nice stuff, friendly stuff and good company all the way.

My verdict:

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Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

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