The Last Devil to Die

It’s no coincidence that the victim in The Last Devil to Die is someone very close to one of the characters. Throughout the series, new and old friendships feature prominently among the books’ plots and subplots, but The Last Devil to Die amplifies this trend. This is the first time that the Thursday Murder Club has been personally and emotionally invested in a case from the beginning, and their relationship to the deceased is only one of the ways in which the theme of friendship and camaraderie among retirees is explored.

The importance of friendship among those in their later years is a subject that comes up again and again. In Chapter 1, the gang is celebrating Christmas together and has invited Mervyn along. Joyce is chasing after a potential romance, but they learn that he is already involved with someone: In his loneliness, he has allowed himself to be catfished, although he refuses to accept this when confronted about it later. In Chapter 3, Joyce provides details about the gang’s Christmas gifts to each other. Chapter 4 touches upon the shared loneliness of the widows and widowers who own shops near Kuldesh’s. Chapter 7 describes the Coopers Chase New Year’s Eve party. In Chapter 55, Joyce does not know what to do with herself without Elizabeth around, and she ends up watching snooker with Ibrahim, Ron, and Computer Bob. Some of these episodes explicitly address the importance of companionship in old age, while others imply it by showing the characters engaged in conversations and activities with one another. In all cases, however, the message is the same: Human connection is as vital to older individuals as it is to anyone else.

There are two moments where the exploration of this theme is most pronounced. The first occurs at the impromptu funeral for “Snowy” the fox, where residents say goodbye to their wild friend. Joyce writes about the event in her diary: “There was a surprisingly big turn-out. I think we all thought he was our own special secret, but, once the details were put on the noticeboard, half the village turned out to pay their respects” (216). The residents of Coopers Chase even have their secrets and private anguishes in common.

The second moment involves sharing one such secret. In Chapter 72, Ibrahim opens up to someone for the very first time about his relationship with Marius. He feels comfortable with Bob, and Bob seems to feel comfortable with him. When Ibrahim asks if he’s had fun being involved with the Thursday Murder Club, Bob says that he has: “Often I just do online quizzes, or read up about things, or wait for lunch, and this has given me something else to do. I think I spend too much time alone” (288). This leads to the conversation that Ibrahim has been waiting close to six decades to have with someone, and afterward, Bob says that he is interested in what will happen next in Ibrahim’s story. Even toward the end of their lives, Bob is looking forward to a future with Ibrahim.

One of the tenets of the murder mystery genre is that there is rarely only one crime committed over the course of a story, and often there are multiple murders. Protagonists must therefore take care that they do not wind up as one of the secondary or tertiary corpses. As the series progresses, the members of the Thursday Murder Club are less and less surprised when they find themselves in physical danger as a result of their investigations, but the challenges and dangers themselves haven’t lessened.

The challenges of becoming involved in an investigation like this don’t vary much from case to case. Working in their unofficial capacity, the members of the Thursday Murder Club are often able to pry information out of suspects or witnesses who might be less willing to speak to the police, but when someone isn’t willing to talk, they don’t have the power of the official police apparatus to back them up. Likewise, they do not have the same access to crime scenes and evidence as the police do; even Chris and Donna, with whom the group has a working relationship, prevent Elizabeth and Joyce from entering Kuldesh’s shop. The group uses a variety of methods to circumvent these impediments, some of which are downright illegal. The Last Devil to Die culminates in the group helping Garth to flee the country in exchange for his help extracting a confession from Kuldesh’s killer.

The challenges are nothing compared to the dangers, though. There are a few places in The Last Devil to Die where the gang find themselves in genuine peril. The first instance is when Dom catches them staking out his warehouse. He slashes their tires, smashes their windshield, and threatens to kill them if they continue to follow him. Not long afterward, Ron is attacked when Mitch Maxwell breaks into his house. He tries to act tough, but it’s impossible to ignore the pain that he’s in. After Mitch’s discussion with the entire gang about the missing heroin, he asks Ron whether he really hurt his hip. Ron replies, “Course you did. I’m an old man, you idiot” (113), highlighting that his age makes him more vulnerable to physical dangers of the investigation. Joyce’s apartment is also broken into, this time by Garth, although she isn’t home at the time and so fares a bit better than Ron. There are also multiple situations in which the members of the Thursday Murder Club are threatened with guns. When Jeremmy comes for the money that was promised to Tatiana and learns that he isn’t going to get it, he tells them that he’s going to shoot someone. Later that same evening, it is Mitch’s turn to threaten the gang with a gun. He becomes desperate when he learns that they won’t be giving him the missing heroin. Garth, who has by this time figured everything out, then pulls a gun on Mitch. Luckily no one is shot, but it typifies the type of danger encountered during the Thursday Murder Club’s investigations.