The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)

by Richard Osman

“Did you know that ‘scampi’ is the plural?” says Ibrahim, his paper crown fashionably askew. “Each individual piece is a ‘scampo.’ ”

I fear I might be barking up the wrong tree with this one. I just hope I can bark up the right tree one of these days. Before I run out of trees. Or before I stop barking altogether.

“May you be granted health and wealth and wisdom, and may you see your beauty reflected in those around you,”

Perhaps next year I’ll get her an advent calendar full of diamonds or hummus.

however much life teaches you that nothing lasts, it is still a shock when it disappears. When the man you love with every fiber starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.

“I think, objectively, I am skilled,” says Ibrahim. “Do I have self-doubt? Yes. Do I believe I have helped many people? Also yes.

“Grief doesn’t need an answer, any more than love does,” says Elizabeth. “It isn’t a question.”

“I don’t know why we’re on this earth,” says Stephen. “Truly I don’t. But if I wanted to find the answer, I would begin with how much I love you.

Days when we remember what has gone, and fear what is to come. The joy love brings, and the price we pay. When we give thanks but also pray for mercy.

aubergine is actually a fruit, and the Americans call it eggplant, because early varieties were white in color and oval in shape?”

“Every true soul is unknowable,” says Ibrahim. “Who says that?” Bob asks. “Me, Freud, Jung, some others,” says Ibrahim. “That’s why I enjoy my job. You can only ever know so much. We remain out of reach to each other.”