lightreads

The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet that Missed, and The Last Devil to Die

5/5. Series of mysteries set in and around a posh retirement village and the four residents who become (in some cases reluctant) friends as they solve crime.

Oh, I loved these. It took me a minute – this isn’t my genre, and it’s doing those punchy super short chapters that don’t always work for me. But I laughed. Out loud! More than once! And, even more rarely, I cried. Twice. Once just a little misting (book 3) and once full on weeping (book 4, if you know you know, I mean of course I saw it coming miles off, but that didn't matter a bit).

The thing about these is. Aside from being funny and also gently removing my heart from my chest. The thing about them is that their most important project is foregrounding unlikely friendship. Our four main protagonists, sure. But also the two cops of different races and generations and seniority who become the cutest BFF’s. And the crowning glory that is Bogdan falling into family with Stephen and Elizabeth over the chess board and dug up bodies. Friendship makes these books go in beautiful, wholesome, messy, complicated ways, and it sends multiple characters on arcs of deep self-fulfillment that they never expected. You don’t stop growing as a person just because you’re eighty. They all give me life.

Are these perfect? Far from it. Just the most obvious – there’s a health/weight loss plotline where I kept waiting for it to grow some nuance or interest, and it just doesn’t. And you have to suspend some more “but that’s not how that works” parts of your brain. But totally worth it.

I needed that.

Content notes: Dementia. Grief/loss. Assisted suicide.