"Any multinational organization can be cutthroat, but when the organization is made up of trained killers, the stakes are incalculably high. I wouldn’t have given a thin Eisenhower dime for the chances of whoever decided to pass on information from the Museum files. Naomi was as ruthless as the rest of us when it came to protecting her position as a director. But if she meant to hold her job, she would have to eliminate the mole and make sure Pasha Lazarov didn’t act on the information he’d received. The death of Lilian Flanders wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in the Museum; the loss of four former field agents would set alarm bells ringing from Belize to Bucharest.”
That’s a passage from the beginning of Deanna Raybourn’s crime novel Kills Well with Others, the sequel to Killers of a Certain Age. If you remember from her previous novel, the four female assassins are sixty-year-old women retired from an organization that began after WWII to hunt and kill escaped Nazis. It then morphed into killing all sorts of bad people. They come out of retirement when it’s discovered that they have been targeted by an Eastern European gangster, their names given away by a mole in the organization. They have to kill the gangster before he kills them and help to find the mole. And because of the mole, they have to accomplish it without the knowledge and aid of the assassin organization.
It’s a fun read with plenty of twists and turns and an exciting climax including a to-the-death scene on a moving train. If you enjoyed Killers of a Certain Age, then you must read Kills Well with Others.
