November 1979. "My mother always says it’s common as pin tracks to go around with a run in your stocking.” Helen says, eyeing Billie’s ripped hosiery critically. Billie rolls her eyes. “Helen, its’ murder, not cotillion.” “It’s not murder,” Helen corrects. “It’s an assassination, and you can make an effort to look nice.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and those are the opening lines to the first chapter of Deanna Raybourn’s novel Killers of a Certain Age. It’s the first assassination assignment for this team of women.
Billie, Helen, Natalie and Mary Alice are in their twenties when they are recruited to work for a network of assassins called the Museum. The Museum was first started after WWII to bring death to Nazis who escaped justice but then expanded its work to include other evil doers such as arms dealers, sex traffickers and the occasional dictator.
Forty years later, the four women are being treated to a retirement gift of a cruise on an elite ship. As the cruise progresses they suddenly spy another Museum employee working on the ship incognito and soon realize that this time they are the assassination target. They have two choices: give up their way of life and disappear or take out the three Museum directors who have given the kill order.
At sixty years old and without the usual Museum resources, they decide to take on one more mission and get to work. Picture Charlie’s Angels at age 60. Can forty years of experience make up for lack of stamina? This is a quick, fun, read with, need I say, very strong female characters.
If you want to read a novel about what, as the jacket says, “it means to be a woman - and a killer - of a certain age,” then you must read Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn.
