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November 10, 2022
Protected: Week/Weekend Recap
November 14, 2022
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
★★★★☆
353 pages
Published: September 6, 2022
by Berkley Books
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.
Main Characters
The four assassins
- Billie – leader of the pack
- Mary Alice
- Helen – recently widowed, struggling with it
- Natalie
Other characters
- Kevin C (aka Brad) – on an assignment as a worker on the cruise ship
- Mary Alice’s wife
- Minka – Billie’s friend, Billie saved her from Ukraine
- Swinney – a retired agent that the group had good relationships with
- Constance Holiday – a legendary English spy that was the mastermind behind the Sphinx, the all female assassin organization
My Review
It is entertaining to read about the assassins using their older age as a way to become invisible. I went into this book thinking it would be similar to the Thursday Murder Club. While it has some comedic elements, it has a different flavor. There is a lot more graphic killing and not as much dry humor.
I really enjoyed the book – there is something about old ladies being underestimated and murdering people well! The book went back and forth between the current timeline and then the timeline when they were poached for The Museum. I enjoyed the past timeline – especially since it showcased some of the relationships between the women and helped to build each of their characters.
Overall – I would definitely recommend this book for anyone looking for a clever, adventure filled book that highlights older women assassins capitalizing on their age to be invisible. However, if you are going in thinking this will be like The Thursday Murder Club, this is not it.
Summary with Spoilers
*SPOILERS – Do NOT expand this section unless you want to know the spoilers!*
While on the cruise ship, they find out that someone has put a kill hit on the four of them. They get everyone off the boat, it explodes, and the get away and pretend to be dead. They make it back to the US with some help of Billie’s friend. When in New Orleans, they call a friend to come and talk to them, thinking he is on their side. Swinney shows up and he has turned on the to get the bonus for killing them. Billie kills him. She is followed by another Museum Assassin, but gets away. Billie gets ahold of the curators – Martin informs her that there is a hit on them because it is thought they were killing people on the side. He says it went into the system through non normal channels and he doesn’t know who has sent on the info. Billie gets ahold of Naomi and she says that it could be infiltrated through the top. The women decide to go to Europe to take out the board members. It turns out that Helen has purchased the house there where they first trained. They head there. They murder Gunther and Tiare by crashing a spa day and then going underground in Paris and breaking into the house through the bathroom vanity. Billie steals their dossier on the way out. The dossier has to have initials of the person who put it together. It turns out it was Martin, he wanted to get to the top of the organization by having the women kill the board of directors. Vance caught on. The women make a plan and go to an auction that Vance and Martin will be at. The four women with some help take down Martin and Vance. Naomi shows up and she helps to get the kill order removed from the women since she is now head of the Museum with Vance and Martin gone.