The Bullet That Missed
The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, 3) Richard Osman. Penguin Books (ISBN: 9780593299418) 2022.
Summary: The Thursday Murder Club investigates the murder of a TV journalist while Elizabeth must kill an old spy friend.
Once again, the Thursday Murder Club are in deeper than they expected, and loving every minute of it. The four have decided to investigate the unsolved murder of Bethany Waites. Waite was a TV journalist investigating a VAT avoidance scheme and was about to break the story. The same night she had called Mike Waghorn, the news host, her car was found at the bottom of a cliff, with bloodstains that matched hers. Investigators find clothes but no body. It was assumed she had washed out to sea. The one woman who went to prison for the scheme said nothing.
Meanwhile, a man who calls himself the Viking abducts Stephen and Elizabeth. He gives Elizabeth a stark choice. Either kill an old KGB spy, Viktor Illyich, or the Viking will kill Joyce. As it turns out, Elizabeth and Viktor had gone from rivals to lovers, long before Stephen. Yet she takes Joyce along to Viktor’s suite to kill him, not having told Joyce about the Viking’s threat. But in reality, they feign his death and he joins the Club, both to catch the Viking and to work on the other murder.
The question is, why does the Viking want Viktor Illych dead? And who is he? It turns out Stephen supplies a key clue, in a moment of mental awareness, even as he gently and sadly declines into dementia, a decline that will hit Bogdan as hard as anyone.
Meanwhile, the Club is meeting all the people associated with Bethany Waites from Mike Waghorn, who wants her killer found, to Pauline, the make-up person, who falls in love with Ron, to a rival, Fiona Clemence, now a famous TV personality. They work with Chief Constable, Andrew Everton, and even enlist Connie, the drug dealer’s help, despite the fact that she intends to kill Ron and Bogdan.
Before they wrap things up, two more murders take place while Joyce faces a murderous Viking. And I will leave things there so you can have the same fun I did reading to the end!