The Bullet That Missed

By Richard Osman, Viking, 2022, 336 pages
Reviewed by Tom Vogt, October 30, 2022

A mystery writer needs one thing above all. It goes beyond an appealing cast of characters and an engaging plot, since those are keys to any good literary effort. But to really have a mystery novel, you must have a mystified reader.

With "The Bullet That Missed," I was mystified time after time.

The third entry in Richard Osman's "Thursday Murder Club" series checked both boxes on the literary must-do list. The cast is led by four residents of a retirement community on the English coast: Elizabeth, a former British spy; Joyce, a long-time ER nurse; Ron, a veteran labor activist; and Ibrahim, a psychiatrist.

The plot features two distinct crimes. The Thursday Murder Club, as the quartet calls itself, is looking at the cold-case disappearance of a television journalist. Meanwhile, Elizabeth gets a chilling text message. She must kill one of her old Cold War adversaries, now retired in a luxury apartment complex in London. If she doesn't kill the former KGB agent, the anonymous text-messenger will kill Joyce.

Osman eventually weaves strands of the two cases together in satisfying fashion, resulting in what – to me, anyway – is his best book so far.

It helps that Osman, who made his name as a British TV personality, is a funny guy who can pack the deadly and the ditzy into the same paragraph. When Elizabeth travels to London to drop in on the Russian, she brings Joyce ... along with a pistol in her purse. Joyce, unaware of what is at stake, hopes she can take a dip in the complex's fabulous swimming pool after the visit.

Osman writes: There will be no swimming today. But they might need towels.

Osman's background as a TV presenter flavors much of the plot thread that focuses on the investigative reporter. There is another bit of inside information that might be useful, depending on personal circumstances. A police investigator advises one character that the best alias for creating a new identity is the name of a famous person; it makes you impossible to Google.