It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A decade-old cold case—their favorite kind—leads them to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers.

Then a new foe pays Elizabeth a visit. Her mission? Kill or be killed. Suddenly the cold case has become red hot.

While Elizabeth wrestles with her conscience (and a gun), Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim chase down the clues with help from old friends and new. But can the gang solve the mystery and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?

From an upmarket spa to a prison cell complete with espresso machine to a luxury penthouse high in the sky, this third adventure of the Thursday Murder Club is full of the cleverness, intrigue, and irresistible charm that readers have come to expect from Richard Osman’s bestselling series.

Our favorite gang of septuagenarian crime solvers is back! What more is there to say?

As established in the first two Thursday Murder Club books, the fabulous foursome of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron have a weekly club meeting in the jigsaw room of the Coopers Chase retirement village — not to work on conversational French or play cribbage or do a bit of knitting, but to crack open cold case murder files, track down clues, and solve the case.

This time around, they focus on the case of Bethany Waites, an up and coming young TV reporter who disappeared while investigating a major tax fraud scheme. Her car was found crashed at the bottom of a cliff, but her body was presumed carried away by the tide and was never found. As the gang digs in, they apply their unique investigatory skills to conversations with police officers, money launderers, convicted drug dealers, TV stars, and more.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s past as a secret agent comes back to haunt her, as it tends to do. A shady figure threatens the life of someone important to her, unless she carries out an assassination on his behalf. She doesn’t want to do it… but there’s another life on the line, and she has very limited time until the threats become reality.

As always, the main characters’ lives intersect with friends, love interests, local crooks and law enforcement, and all sorts of colorful new people to involve in their schemes. Danger, subterfuge, and lots of tea and cake are involved.

I’ll admit that the details of the main crime in The Bullet That Missed didn’t enthrall me quite as much as in the two previous books… but that’s okay. The crime is only part of the point of reading these books. The real fun is in hanging out with the characters, seeing them in action, and enjoying their very funny dialogue and escapades.

I’m eager to continue the series, and plan to do so as soon as my library hold comes in for the next book!