My thoughts

This is the fourth book in the “Thursday Murder Club” series and it has a different vibe/feeling compared to the other ones. At the end I even thought that it might be the last one in the series, but never mind - I saw that the fifth one will appear sometime in September 2025.

Ok, so guess what? We have to solve a murder. This one is much more personal. The dead man is one of Stephen’s friends, an antique dealer, and we stumble upon a whole drug empire, and antique dealers that are committing frauds - faking Picassos and selling drugs.

Here for once we get an Elizabeth that is not always in the middle of the action, and for good reason. We do see her… getting emotional for once, if you can imagine that.

Putting her on the sideline, it really lets the spotlight shine on the other characters in the series. I do like that I get to see a bit more of Ron, Bogdan, and Ibrahim. There are entire chapters where you completely forget about Elizabeth, but she still has a very important role in the book in a different dimension.

Joyce is the character that evolves the most in this book, piecing together a lot of the pieces of the puzzle and taking charge of the matter. She’s not my favorite of the gang - she has her good moments for me, but overall I find her character a bit too much.

Apart from the regular characters we get in the series, I did enjoy Garth, the Canadian antique dealer, and Mitch Maxwell. Mitch’s death has some nice visuals - if you put yourself in that scene, seeing it all happen.

Overall it’s a fun murder-solving book that touches on some serious matters (which is the Elizabeth part that I don’t want to spoil it), and manages to keep it interesting until the last pages.

If you had the chance to get the audiobook I recommend it. It’s voiced by Fiona Shaw and she manages some very good accents for the characters.