The long-term friendship and camaraderie between the women is definitely the highlight here. It’s a bit over-the-top at times, but it somehow works. There’s mystery and intrigue here, but it’s more modern, following a group of older women spies, both in the present and through flashbacks to their early career in the late 70s and early 80s. I am most familiar with Deanna Raybourn through her Veronica Speedwell series, so Killers of a Certain Age is very much a change of pace for me with her work (and based on what I know of her stand-alone works, it’s rather unique in and of itself). I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman-and a killer-of a certain age. 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. 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.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. 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. 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 by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.īillie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon.

Killers of a certain age characters