The latest instalment of Richard Osman's best-selling Thursday Murder Club books has hit the shelves - and Kent, once again, features heavily.

The Bullet That Missed is the third in the series of books which revolve around the adventures of a group of pensioners living in a retirement village in East Sussex.

The intrepid group of Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron gather each week to examine old unsolved murder case files in a bid to unearth new clues.

Now the eagerly anticipated third book, set to shoot to the top of the sales chart this week, sees much of the action based right here in Kent.

Without giving any of the plot away, core to their investigations is the death of a former South East Today TV presenter who drives off Shakespeare Cliff at Dover.

There are plenty of local references - from everywhere from Tunbridge Wells to Thanet.

Even the Kent Messenger - publisher of KentOnline - gets a mention.

The Bullet That Missed follows in the footsteps of the original Thursday Murder Club book - which became the best-seller in Christmas 2020; the first debut fiction title to do so.

Its follow-up, The Man Who Died Twice, also shot to the top of the charts when it came out last September.

Work on a big screen version is also under way after legendary director Steven Spielberg acquired the rights. Shooting on that is due to begin next year.

"I wrote this latest book in the full hurricane of sales and feedback and public opinion," Richard Osman - also known for co-presenting BBC quiz show Pointless for many years, explained. He'd penned the first two before the original had been published.

"Which is absolutely lovely, because I walk down the street and people chat to me about the book.

“But in another way, you have to ignore it, because you have to write it like you wrote the first two. When people tell me what they like about it or the characters they like, I think I’ll put more of them in – and suddenly the book would be 800 pages long. I just have to shut the door, hang out with these characters, write the book that I want to write, and trust that people are going to enjoy it.”

The original Thursday Murder Club book saw scenes set around a Waitrose store in Tunbridge Wells - something which caused something of a stir as the town doesn't have one.

As the author later admitted in a TV interview: "They were furious already that there is no Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells, and now this has made it much worse for them."