RATING: VERY GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
Not surprisingly this was an excellent read. In this novel a string of people are killed. Everybody seems to go after the heroine that Kuldesh was allegedly killed for. There is Mitch Maxwell, the drug dealer who was responsible for the box in the first place; Dom Holt, who works for Mitch and gave the box to Kuldesh in the first place; Luca Buttaci, Mitch's partner; Sam Barnes and Garth, a married couple who run an antique shop but sell fake items; and the Afghans who the box belonged to. Apart from that, SIO Jill Regan is also after the criminals.
The club discovers that Kuldesh made two phone calls; one to the daughter of some friends, Nina, who is a professor of archaelogy, and she tells the club that Kuldesh did call but she was in a hurry and didn't give her many details. The second call was to an untraceable number.
The people starts dying. First, Don is found dead. It is Chris, who, disobeying SIO Regan, decides to break into the lockup and finds Don with a shot in his forehead. Chris panics and calls Joyce and Ibrahim, who agree to lie and say that they saw the door had been forced open and called Chris.
The next victim is Samantha, who is killed by someone who breaks into her house and pushes her down the stairs. Garth meets Mitch and Luca in a car park, and Garth is not very happy and at some point he pushes Luca from the top floor of the car park and dies.
As all this is happening, Elizabeth is more and more worried about Stephen and his health condition. In this novel she is not with the others so much. Yet, she is the one who discovers the truth about the box with the heroine. Stephen does not want to become a burden or go to a nursing home, so he asks Elizabeth and Bogdan to help him die, and he uses some drug to kill himself. Everybody is very sad for Elizabeth's loss. It is when thinking about Stephen and what he kept saying about Kuldesh and the fox that Elizabeth realises that the second call Kuldesh did was to her (She has an untraceable number), so Kuldesh came to see Stephen, and they dug the box with the heroin in a nearby field.
When the club has the heroin back, they use it to unmask the person trying to cheat Mervyn. Tatiana, his alleged sweetheart, wants money and Ibrahim and Computor Bob talk to Tatiana through the computer with the persmission of Mervyn. Ibrahim says that he can't send the money but could give it to someone she could send. So they agree that someone called Jeremmy would pick up the money, and Computer Bob discover that Tatiana and Jeremy have the same IP address, which means that there is only one. When Jeremmy comes to see Ibrahim and the others, they say they don't have the money, but he could take the heroin instead, which Jeremmy realises costs more. When Jeremmy leaves, Donna is waiting and arrests him.
Joyce and the others get together with Mitch and Garth, and they tell them that Kuldesh wasn't killed because of the heroin, but because of the box, which is ancient and costs a large sum of money. Then Joyce tells them that she had it under the sink to put her cleaning products, but as it smelled stuffy, she left it for the binmen to collect it.
In reality, Joyce still has it, and Elizabeth has a plan and a suspicion. She goes to see Jojo, the professor who is Nina's boss, and she shows him the box. At some point the fire alarm goes off and the box disappears. It is Nina who has stolen the box and who killed Kuldesh when he told her about the box. Nine goes to meet Garth, and then the police arrive and arrest her but Garth runs away.,
And in a landfill Stephen is trying to find the box in the humungous mountain of rubbish there. He is afraid that the Afghans will kill him, but his plan is to fly to Uruguay if he can't find the box. His wife and children are already gone there. Then he feels a pain in his arm and dies of a heart attack.
In the last chapter Connie is thinking about how she hasn't treated Ibrahim well. He tries to help her to become a better person, but she has done nothing. Actually, she is the one responsible for the deaths of Dom and Samantha. She has a person who kills for her, Caroline, and the reason is that she wants to get hold of the heroin trade monopoly.
This has been an exciting read like always. It also has emotional moments like when Stephen dies. And there is an episode in which Ibrahim tells Computer Bob that when he was young, he was in love with Marius, a German student, but Marius died. This is the first time Ibrahim has told about Marius and he feels that his heart is lighter.
Joyce is my favourite character. She is witty and so clever. I like it when she gets flirtatious with the men she likes. Mervyn was a disappointment, but now a new neighbour has moved to the village, Edwin, and maybe this time she will be lucky.
In the acknowledgements the author has explained that there will be other mysteries for the Thursday Murder Club and I can't wait.
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