assassins | Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Kills Well with Others
Series: Killers of a Certain Age, #2
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: March 4, 2025
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their rest, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions before she gets the itch to get back in the game. When they receive a call from Naomi Ndiaye, the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, all of them connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster who rules her business empire with an iron fist and plays puppet master in international affairs. Naomi is convinced this criminal queen is bent upon revenge, killing off the agents who attempted to thwart her, and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster and her assassin. But their nemesis is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their experience and a whole lot of luck to get out of this mission alive.

Who knew that we needed novels about women assassins in their 60s? Kills Well with Others is the follow-up to Deanna Raybourn’s 2023 smash hit, Killers of a Certain Age. Both books prove that deadly women… of a certain age… make for excellent entertainment.

The first book was oodles of fun, and now the fabulous four are back for another adventure. Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie had more or less retired after the events of the first book. But for Billie at least, retirement — meaning a peaceful life on a Greek island with the man she loves — is making her a bit itchy. Yes, she’s happy, but that sense of purpose (and adrenaline) seems to be missing.

I realized that there are some jobs you leave, but they never leave you. I was playing at being retired because the truth was, I would be a killer until the day I died.

The women are called back into action after a former colleague is murdered, in a way that obviously indicates that this is payback for an assassination they carried out decades earlier. It soon becomes clear that they themselves may be the next targets. Someone is out for revenge, and the team has to figure out who it is, and how to stop them.

There’s enough context provided in Kills Well with Others that a reader could jump right in and follow the story (although I do recommend starting with book one to get the full effect). Essentially, we’re cheering on assassins who work for a non-governmental, international super-secret organization called the Museum, whose purpose is to rid the world of tyrants and cartel honchos and other ultra-bad guys that the more legal approaches can’t seem to touch. I struggled with the morality of the whole concept in book one (am I really rooting for killers???), but ultimately, to enjoy the books, we just have to let that aspect go and take it as a given that these killers are the good guys.

Humanity requires champions, like the knights of old, those who are willing to fight and die, bloody themselves so the others may survive.

That hurdle aside, it’s once again a fast-paced, exciting adventure traveling along with these women as they plot and then dive into action. Their creativity is off the charts, they can fight with whatever they have on hand, and — most entertaining of all — their disguise game is absolutely on point. As they remind us throughout the story, older women tend to be ignored or overlooked or underestimated — so who better to go unnoticed, slip into places where they don’t belong, and get away with murder simply because they don’t appear the least bit threatening or powerful?

The concept is a delight, and the execution (ha!) is terrific. We’re whisked along from ships on the Atlantic to trains through the Balkans, with stops along Venetian canals and Sardinian farmlands. The team is strong and tight-knit, but also bickers and banters just how you’d expect from women who’ve been the closest of friends for 40 years.

Plotwise, the story unfolds with twists upon twists, and plenty of mistaken identities, clues, and red herrings. The women are amazing when they team up, and it’s always a hoot to see the various roles they take on while carrying out a hit or a surveillance mission.

Kills Well with Others is exciting start to finish, and has a very satisfying ending… but clearly, these “women of a certain age” have a lot of fight left in them, and the door seems open (or at least, ajar) for more adventures yet to come. I really enjoyed this outing, and hope Deanna Raybourn will continue the series!

Title: Killers of a Certain Age
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: September 6, 2022
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

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.

Just because a woman hits 60, it doesn’t mean she’s weak or powerless. And the women of Killers of a Certain Age are here to make sure we don’t forget it!

In this action-rich thriller by the talented Deanna Raybourn, the four women at the heart of the story should be enjoying the celebratory luxury cruise marking their retirement — but when they spot a fellow assassin from the shadowy organization they work for hidden among the ship’s crew, they realize they’ve been targeted, and soon enter a fight for their lives.

As the foursome evade death through all sorts of clever, daring, inventive means, they know that the kill order must have come from the top, and in their world, as the blurb says, it’s kill or be killed. Banding together, they plot, scheme, and fight to take out the Museum’s Directors. With their own lives on the line, one mistake could mean the end for all of them.

Killers of a Certain Age is a fast-paced adventure, with the four main character at its heart using their mad skills, cunning, and whatever tools they have at hand to turn their own assassinations back on their adversaries and, they hope, finally leave the business behind them for good.

Each woman is given a backstory, although some are more fleshed out than others. The Museum, we’re told, was originally founded in the aftermath of the second World War, with the purpose of finding and eliminating the many Nazis who managed to slink away and evade justice. Over the years, the Museum’s mission expanded to include drug lords and criminal masterminds. Unaffiliated and uncontrolled by any one government, the Museum is a well-funded, top secret, highly powerful organization that moves through the world via stealth and surveillance, and takes out those deemed the highest threats.

Now, to enjoy Killers of a Certain Age, we readers have to put aside any qualms about the morality of an extra-legal assassination organization. We’re clearly meant to root for Billie, Mary Ann, Helen, and Natalie, and to understand that they see themselves as forces of good. Yes, they clean up the rot that pervades the world and evades more traditional types of justice. But at the end of the day, they’re women who’ve spent 40 years traveling the world and murdering people. I can’t bring myself to feel sorry about them dispensing justice to Nazis and cartel bosses… but I can’t say I’m entirely comfortable with this either.

Still, accepting that these are our heroines, it’s certainly fun to cheer for their success, especially when they take advantage of other people’s views of older women to be able to slip into places unseen and unchallenged.

There are some funny moments (such as the women using a menopause-tracking app with animated kitten avatars as a way to communicate without being tracked), but overall, it’s not a particularly funny book (which readers coming from the world of the author’s Veronica Speedwell mystery series may be expecting). The characters are memorable, and I loved reading a story where women “of a certain age” not only matter, but truly kick ass, take names, and make a difference.

The underlying concept — four assassins as the heroes of a story — still doesn’t sit entirely well with me, but overall, this is a fun, fast, exciting read. Kind of like a female James Bond squad, but with murder. If you don’t take it too seriously and just go with the concept, it works!