The Return of the Spy

THE LAST DEVIL TO DIE by Richard Osman (Viking; 432 pages; ₹799)

Richard Osman’s bestsell­ing cozy set in a retirement home in the English coun­tryside is back. This time, the Thursday Murder Club gang must solve the murder of an old friend who’d helped them in the previ­ous book. It begins with the murder of Kuldesh Sharma, an art dealer with an antiques shop who is waiting for someone in the dark, dark, woods. He is shot dead. And then we rewind to the previous day for a Boxing Day lunch with the Thursday Murder Club gang who’ve invited a new retiree, Mervyn, to join them. During the conversation, Mervyn reveals he has a sweetheart, Tatiana, whom he’s never met. Of course, he’s sent her five thousand pounds to get a passport and buy a ticket. When the others point out he is the victim of a romance scam, he refuses to believe it. We dip into the resident spymaster Elizabeth’s worries about her husband’s descent with frighten­ing rapidity into Alzheimer’s, and into the very nice Joyce’s diary about the humdrum goings-on in their lives. On hearing about the murder, Elizabeth and Joyce promptly rush to Kuldesh’s shop to investigate, but are turned away by their police friends. They find out from the cafe owner down the street that a well-dressed man had visited the shop that day, and soon psychoanalyst Ibrahim (another Thursday Club member) has been dispatched to the jail to interview their drug-lord friend Connie about the man’s identity. She identifies the man as a heroin drug dealer, and suggests that Kuldesh must’ve kept a parcel with heroin for someone—his payment in kind for their ‘protection’. Their police contacts tell them that Kuldesh had made two phone calls, one to Nina, a history professor, and the other to an untraceable 777 number, which mafia types and others use as a substitute for burner phones.

Joyce and Elizabeth interview Nina Mishra, who says Kuldesh was her parents’ friend, but often called her to talk over things. “Kuldesh was not always after my opinion on antiques. Sometimes… morality.” He had spoken of a dilemma, but she’d been in a hurry. And no, he hadn’t arranged to meet her.

As the mystery deepens, they find themselves under threat from heroin dealers and art forgers, while tackling heartache close to home. As more suspects are bumped off, the question about the whereabouts of the package assumes vital impor­tance. Can they find it in time? Who will be the last devil to die?

The Last Devil to Die is longer than the previous books, and the multitude of characters continue to proliferate, which may confuse those who’ve not read the earlier books. The Thursday Murder Club gang continue to blithely go where angels fear to tread, with the women hogging most of the action in this light-hearted caper. True to the cozy trope, none of them are ever in any danger, and everyone including the baddies are very help­ful to them. Osman wraps up one of the story lines from the earlier books in this one, and does so in a deeply moving way. Osman’s fans (he’s topped the bestseller charts for many weeks for each of his earlier books and for this one too) will enjoy this new outing.

THE SECRET HOURS by Mick Herron (Soho Crime; 384 pages; ₹2,105)

Mick Herron, the author of the Slough House series has been called the John Le Carré of the 21st century. Like Le Carré, Herron’s subject is the British spy service. In The Secret Hours, a stand-alone spy thriller, we revisit the pasts and present of some characters from the Slough House series, but you don’t have to have read them to enjoy this one. The Prime Minister had begun an investigation into the past misdeeds and ‘histori­cal over-reaching’ of MI5 two years ago. Two civil servants, Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, are roped in to run the Monochrome inquiry and shepherd the panel of luminaries appointed to the investigation. Of course, the formidable First Desk, Britain’s top spy, won’t let them see any MI5 files unless they have been properly requisitioned with the appropriate se­rial numbers. In classic Yes Minister style, the mandarins of MI5 stop any possibility of skeletons coming out, and the two civil servants have to lump it. With the Prime Minister ousted, and a new administration in power, Monochrome has officially been closed. But on the eve of its closure, Kyle is given a file in the supermarket. It pertains to a classified operation in 1994 Berlin with three players that ended in tragedy and a scandal. What connection does it have with the present power struggle at the very top? Who, among the top brass are implicated in that sensitive operation? Who is interested in airing the file, and who wants to squelch it? The two civil servants find themselves in the eye of the storm, their bureaucratic fate at the mercy of a world-weary cynicism driving any Herron story.

The opening chapter is a masterclass in starting a thriller. An intruder breaches Max’s (whose real name may be some­thing else) home, there is a chase, and an exquisite weaving of his backstory with the action and tension. It sets up a cracker of a start, and then we move into Herron territory—a wry take on the Machiavellian manoeuvrings of the mandarins, the upstarts on the committee who see themselves as climbing the upward ladder only to realise they’ve been shunted out, and the moral choices they have to make in dead-end jobs. A must-read for Herron fans.

SQUEAKY CLEAN by Callum McSorley (Pushkin Vertigo; 356 pages; ₹611 on the Kindle)

Squeaky Clean won Callum McSorley, a Glaswegian, the McIlvanney prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year last month. It is his debut, but what a blistering and humour-filled read it is. It grabs you by the collar and hauls you into the worlds of Detective Inspector Ally McCoist, out to prove herself to colleagues who think she is either bent or a complete screw-up, and Davey Burnet, a deadbeat carwash employee who is struggling to turn over a new leaf for his little daughter. DI Ally mucked up a case and let the local gang-lord Paulo get away.

Paulo brings his spanking new Land Rover to the carwash where Davey is an employee. Late for a custody hearing for his young daughter, Davey drives off in it. After a series of mishaps, the car is destroyed, and Davey finds himself (and the car wash owner) owing Paulo a huge favour. With the gang lord’s nephew ‘Colin the Karaterpillar’ ensuring that Davey and his boss pay back the favour, the carwash finds itself the official cleaning station for the psychopath’s bloody escapades; Paulo enjoys playing games like ‘Keep Yer Knee­caps’ with anyone who crosses him.

Meanwhile DI Ally wants to get back to the murder beat instead of following up complaints about the rude behaviour of car wash owners. After one such complaint, she noses around in the carwash. Ironically, Ally too has lost custody of her children because of her dedication to her job, an interesting gender flip of a famil­iar trope. Davey, who is desperate never to return to prison, has to figure out a way to get Paulo off his back. Can he and Ally help each other?

Squeaky Clean has an authenticity that comes from the use of dialect (which infuses Davey’s speech), flashback, visceral prose, gallows humour and train-wrecks of characters. Fizzing like a Molotov cocktail and full of emotional drama, it is no wonder McSorley beat giants like Val McDermid and Ian Rankin to snatch the prize.

booksCallum McSorleycrimecrime thrillerfictionMick HerronRichard Osman