Mystery
Killers of a Certain Age
by Deanna Raybourn
Quick take
Nothing ruins retirement like an old employer putting a hit out on you. But these women won’t go down without a fight.
Good to know
Action-packed
Nonlinear timeline
Female friendships
Movieish
Synopsis
Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon.
Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.
When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.
Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman—and a killer—of a certain age.
Free sample
Get an early look from the first pages of Killers of a Certain Age.
Why I love it
Caitlin Wahrer
Author, The Damage
Four sixty-something assassins are on their retirement cruise when badass lead Billie spots the last person she wants to see: an uninvited former colleague. The ladies are forced to chug their poolside drinks and handle the situation with a little ingenuity and elbow grease, complete with an escape into the sea and a blown-up cruise ship. It turns out, their former employer—“The Museum”—has ordered their “terminations,” and not in the firing sense.
The Museum has been in the business of killing Nazis and other “undesirable persons” for decades. Plucked from colleges and jail cells alike, Billie and her besties were recruited young and trained well. They aren’t looking forward to retirement: who are they if they aren’t offing “people who need killing”? Luckily for them, when the Museum puts a price on their slightly graying heads, they get a perfect excuse to keep doing what they do best.
I loved the characters in this book so much, particularly Billie. She is fearless and loyal and funny as hell; she isn’t who I want to be when I’m her age—she’s who I want to be now.
Every time I read this book, I escaped to a Caribbean beach bar or the catacombs under Paris. With its travel, luxe looks, and inventive action sequences, Killers of a Certain Age is unputdownable. Don’t miss out on an exhilarating read!