KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE, women-as-assassins is fun enough...OLD women?! Better still!

KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE
DEANNA RAYBOURN (Killers of a Certain Age #1)
Berkley Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon.

They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire—it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller.

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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Aren't revenge-fantasy stories fun? In general, the genre gives me a vicarious delight in the ability of the PoV character(s) to exact personal revenge on them as wronged 'em. I find the more general type of revenge story, the wars/quests/crusades sort, not as compelling as this direct and deeply personal kind.

What works here, for this old male reader, is the "just-assume-the-backstory" nature of the women's friendships. There are hops back and forth in the story's timeline that fill in details, but honestly they were integrated in a way that worked to increase my investment in the shared backstory. It felt a bit like having a memory flash when you're talking to someone you've known for ages.

That might also be a bit of a problem for book one of a series, with the next one (Kills Well with Others) to come on 11 March 2025. I think the way people expect stuff to go in this book is more violent, more "wet job" details in it. Instead, we get the motivation for the revenge story, and the way these women plan and execute (!) events based on their cultural invisibility. I myownself liked that better than the pleasures to be had from a solidly crafted Repairman Jack tale. It's more relatable, more like something I could see myself doing if I was competent in these arts.

Billie, our primary PoV character (though we hear from everyone), has a dry, biting wit that agrees with me, and the situations that are supposed to be funny were indeed funny to me. Humor's hard, y'all, so Author Raybourn gets and deserves nosegays of praise for that achievement. It's also welcome to have women as professional killers, if I'm honest. They're so good at the job they've never been caught. This is probably a weird thing to say, but the existence of women reinforcing ma'at on the dark side seems to me like a welcome development. Saintly do-gooders? Been there done that. Cops repairing the broken social compact? Yawn. Targeting and killing them what just needs killin'? NOW you got me.

A four-star funhouse mirror held to the myth of women as passive, victim-of-crime ciphers. These are vibrant personalities with agency, doing what they know from long experience how to do, only against the ingrates they thought were on their side. I think it's well worth your time and treasure.