Killers of a Certain Age

I thoroughly enjoyed Killers of a Certain Age (2022) by Deanna Raybourn! While mystery/ thriller is a genre I read now and again, I was not familiar with Deanna Raybourn, but she has an extensive backlist and is an Edgar winner.

We meet Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie, all 60-something women on the verge of retirement after 40 years working for “The Museum”–a secret international organization that works outside government to take out truly bad people. It started out after World War II hunting down Nazis, but the four women have worked as a team to assassinate dictators, drug kingpins, and people who “simply need killing to make the world a better place.”

They are nearing retirement, and the Museum sends them on an all-expenses paid cruise to celebrate. But then Billie realizes that another agent is on the cruise with them, and she’d not been told, so he must be there to kill them. They escape to Billie’s safe house in New Orleans, and with help, they figure out what’s going on. They’re the ones to be neutralized next! As all Directors must agree to neutralization of a target, they have no choice but to neutralize the Directors. Without the technical and financial assistance of the Museum, it’s harder than a usual job, but they have experience on their side.

From the Caribbean to the catacombs of Paris, to Zurich and the London estate where their journey began, the four women work together as they always have, this time with their own lives at stake. They are not yet done living!

I loved the relationships between them since they’ve been friends for forty years–each character was very different–from Billie who learned to fight with her hands and is very good at killing–to Mary Alice who hasn’t told her wife about her job–grieving, but usually unflappable Helen, and Natalie who can’t do monogamy.

I am going to classify it as weight-neutral–the author did some general discussion about the women’s bodies as being curvy or boyish, and one of their targets didn’t “age well” but there’s no explicit anti-fat bias, thankfully.