The Last Word

APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

After looking into divorces and boring cases for far too long, Natalka is thrilled when an unexplained death lands on the detective agency’s desk. As the team looks into whether it was a murder, more bodies turn up. After Edwin the octogenarian investigator and Natalka’s monk-turned-coffee-shop-owner boyfriend, Benedict, enrol in a writers’ retreat to do some digging, they realize they’re in way too deep and need the help of police detective Harbinder Kaur. With an intricate plot, best-selling author Elly Griffiths deftly switches between tense clue hunting and hilarious one-liners. We were surprised by the unexpected threads of social commentary around ageism and being a Ukrainian refugee. Narrator Nina Wadia impressively embraces all the quirky characters with different accents and personalities, so you always know who’s talking. This is a satisfyingly light and twisty cozy mystery that’s bags of fun.