Elizabeth Best

An intelligence career behind the cardigan

Elizabeth Best is a retired intelligence professional living at Coopers Chase in Kent. She helped establish the Thursday Murder Club, whose original pastime is examining unsolved police cases. The weekly meeting brings together four very different kinds of experience: Elizabeth’s intelligence work, Joyce’s nursing, Ibrahim’s psychiatry and Ron’s union organising. Elizabeth is the organiser who knows whom to telephone and how to make an apparently casual conversation yield useful information. Her background supplies the series with old colleagues, unexpected contacts and a willingness to take risks that would alarm most retirement-village neighbours.

Stephen, Joyce and the people she protects

Stephen Best is Elizabeth’s husband, a retired academic whose dementia is already part of their life when the series begins. Their relationship shows a gentleness that can be hard to see when Elizabeth is negotiating with an opponent. Bogdan’s friendship with Stephen also brings the builder into her domestic circle. Joyce becomes her close investigative companion: the former nurse’s approachable manner complements Elizabeth’s more intimidating confidence. Ron and Ibrahim are friends with their own judgement, not assistants waiting for orders. Elizabeth’s instinct to protect people through secrecy can put her at odds with that independent-minded group.

How Elizabeth investigates

Elizabeth is comfortable using deception and pressure, and she rarely treats an official job title as a reason to surrender control of a conversation. Her apparent calm is part of her authority: she can make a request sound like an arrangement that has already been agreed. The opening novel introduces this talent through her recruitment of Joyce, whose medical experience she needs for a cold case. It is a neatly revealing encounter. Elizabeth arrives with questions prepared, but she also recognises expertise outside her own profession. The club succeeds because she gathers people with useful differences, not because she knows everything herself.

The novels that bring her past closer

The Man Who Died Twice begins with a letter from an old acquaintance asking for help, drawing Elizabeth’s former life directly into the club’s present. The publisher’s premise involves stolen diamonds and a hunted man; the identity of every ally and enemy is best discovered in the novel. The Bullet That Missed gives Elizabeth a threat with a particularly difficult moral choice, alongside the group’s television-related cold case. The Last Devil to Die places the friendships under emotional strain. Across these books, professional confidence and domestic vulnerability exist together. The quieter conversations with Stephen matter as much as any ingenious manoeuvre.

Where to start

Begin with The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth is an established presence in the village before Joyce joins, so the first book lets you encounter her authority through a newcomer’s eyes. Continue in publication order to enjoy the changing trust between the four friends and the return of people from her earlier career. The Man Who Died Twice is the strongest early choice for espionage intrigue, but it gains warmth from the first book’s introductions. Readers sensitive to dementia and grief should consult our content notes before The Last Devil to Die; those themes are central to Elizabeth’s family story, not incidental details.

On screen

Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth Best in the 2025 Netflix film. See the full actor-to-character cast guide and the film guide.

Read the books and extracts

Start with The Thursday Murder Club. Our reading order follows the novels’ publication sequence. The publisher’s extracts below let you meet the characters in Osman’s own prose; review and cast links offer further background.

• The Thursday Murder Club: opening chapter
• Penguin’s guide to the four club members
• The Man Who Died Twice: opening chapter