And yet, reading about these four friends who take life by the horns when it would've been much easier to just coast and fade out is so inspiring and invigorating. As Richard Osman puts it wisely via Joyce, "The urgency of old age. There's nothing that makes you feel more alive than the certainty of death." Certainly Osman's American publisher, Pamela Dorman, who runs her own imprint at Penguin Random House, had little idea of Osman's fame as a quiz show host when she won the US auction. She responded to Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim, and Ron in the way she had with Eleanor Oliphant, the titular character of Gail Honeyman's smash hit debut novel. The puzzle was fine, but it was about the people. Three minutes into a Zoom call with Richard Osman, I receive excellent news. I had prepared myself for a bittersweet task: to speak with Osman about the Thursday Murder Club, my favorite book series, on the eve of the publication of The Last Devil to Die, which I believe to be the final book. But Osman corrects me: while he’ll be moving on from the Thursday Murder Club series to write a new series, it’s a pause, not a stop, with future books to follow. “By the end of this book, hopefully readers would agree that the characters deserve a year off,” he jokes. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

In The Last Devil to Die , Elizabeth’s beloved husband Stephen is slipping away from her with fewer and fewer good days. To say more would be to slip into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, Elizabeth is not herself so Joyce steps up to take the lead in the new investigation. Granted, that means less time for Joyce to spoil male residents with cake and conversation. Retired nurse Joyce always has an eye for a handsome male, like Mervyn, a newcomer to Coopers Chase. Ibrahim isn’t sure about Mervyn although he’s horrified that he’s being scammed by an online professional posing as a lonely-hearted lady. Osman has said on multiple occasions (and reiterated it to me) that Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim “are going to live in perpetuity.” But next year's book will be something different: the start of a new series featuring a globetrotting young woman and her stay-at-home father-in-law, both of whom are drafted into solving international crimes. It's the sensibility and humor of the Thursday Murder Club books crossed with The Da Vinci Code. Osman began writing the book just last month. There's always something just out of reach. . . . Everyone chasing the thing they don't have. Going mad until they get it." This is not a new phenomenon. Agatha Christie had been publishing mysteries for over two decades when the Second World War made her a household name, and she began her career in 1920, two years removed from the end of the WWI and the influenza pandemic. Osman’s greatest strength is fusing the puzzle-mastery of Christie and her Golden Age peers with emotional earnestness and wry humor. Mortality is a subject simply too great to be avoided entirely, but it can be done without sinking into despair. With Elizabeth preoccupied with Stephen’s care, Joyce takes the lead. Ron is Ron, while the reader finally learns more about Ibrahim’s past. A new friend comes into the fold, and some new residents of Coopers Chase find themselves in scandalous situations. Also, the criminal characters are entertaining, and I especially enjoyed Garth’s character. Donna, Chris, and Bogdan also play significant roles.

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In his author's note, Osman indicates that he is working on a new series, so it might be some time before we can visit with our good friends from Coopers Chase again. I'm glad to know that he has not retired them for good, because I'm invested in this friendship now and I look forward to seeing them again some Thursday in the future. Yes, this group has insanely outlandish adventures. But the friendships ring true and the dialogue is hilarious. <--this is what we're all here for, right?

Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops I think that the people who actually read the books wouldn’t call them cosy crime,” the 52-year-old says firmly. “That’s the sort of thing you might read in an article, but they’re really not. They have some wit to them and some charm and all of that. But they deal with quite serious things and they hopefully have something to say about the country we live in.”My 99-year-old aunt is obsessed with them, but so is my 21-year-old niece. He crosses generations." Osman’s long career in TV has helped him understand the value of giving people what they want and in no way looking down on that. To him, what they so often want is warmth and kindness. “I can’t write about mutilated bodies and serial killers. It’s not in me, it’s not in my heart. I have to write these characters. There was a period where everything had to be very dark and everything had to be very gritty, and everything had to be very sort of ambiguous,” he says. “The cultural conversation in both our countries centers on a very small amount of TV programs or books, which are not really the ones that people actually watch or that people turn to when they’re looking to be entertained. It’s nice to be right in the middle of popular culture with a product which I love and which I’m proud of, which I hope has messages of hope for what the world might be and how we might treat each other. It’s not fashionable, but I’m very glad that it’s popular.” Richard Osman has been an extremely productive and creative author for the past few years, so much so that there now seems to be a plethora of writers who try and duplicate his formula. Once again, Osman proves he is at the top of his game as he treats us to his usual assortment of seniors who assist the police in solving crimes. Elizabeth is the leader, Joyce her friend and diarist, Ron the former union leader and Ibrahim who is a psychogist. Here we have one of their friends, an antique dealer, who is murdered after he is given an old box filled with heroin. The dealer is dead, and the box with the heroin is missing. They care less about the heroin, but need to discover who killed their friend. We also are treated to a side issue of Romance Fraud on the internet as a new resident at their apartments has fallen for an internet romance and shipped a large amount of funds to Lithuania to help his "true love" pay her bills. Add to this, Elizabeth's husband Stephen is suffering from dementia and we have many segments of the book dealing with the condition, aging, death, etc. Finally we also have University professors, Afghan drug smugglers, a cocaine dealer who Ibrahim counsels at her prison cell, and a rival antique dealer and her male Canadian partner. I am telling you, the plot is interesting, we get to also meet Bob the Computer Guy who also has just moved into the complex, and we are treated to Joyce with her diary entries which also help tie things together, and who has surprisingly taken the lead when Elizabeth is indisposed.

But what truly touched me was how Osman and Shaw portrayed dementia in the story. It was the most heartbreaking, beautiful thing I had ever read/listened to. The sensitivity and authenticity with which they depicted this challenging condition added a layer of depth and poignancy to the narrative that left me deeply moved.

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Fiona Shaw's narration is a revelation. Her voice is a perfect match for the material, and she effortlessly brings the characters to life with distinct voices and a depth of emotion that is truly remarkable. It's as if the characters themselves are speaking directly to the listener. Possibly because of the way he grew up without a financial safety net, he has admitted to being obsessed with the metrics when it comes to his work today. “I don’t want someone at the end of the year looking at their balance sheet and going, ‘Oh God, Richard Osman cost us money’. That’s like a nightmare for me. I like to get what I’m worth, I like to be valued. But at the same time, I never want to be overvalued. I’ve got a proper work ethic, I’m a grafter.” Osman was 38 when Pointless first aired in 2009 (Photo: Matt Frost/BBC/Remarkable Television) The mysteries are complex, the characters vivid, and the whole thing is laced with warm humor and—remarkably, considering the body count—good feeling. Your next must-read mystery series.” OMG! I want to get on the waitlist for an Apartment at Cooper’s Chase and join the Thursday Murder Club!