Tag: Killers of a Certain Age

Book Recommendation – Kills Well With Others

Back in 2023, I read Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age. My thoughts about that one can be found here. At the end of my recommendation, I wondered if the ladies from the book might show up in another story. Sure enough, they do. This time it is in Kills Well With Others.

I knew the book was due out this year. While at a library visit with my kids, I saw it on the shelf and immediately checked it out. I read it in two days.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

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 to 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.

I believe it was one of the first book’s reviewers who said it was “Golden Girls Meets James Bond.” I remembered that as I started to read the sequel. I wondered if I needed to go back and read the first one to catch up, but it wasn’t necessary. Once the story started, I recalled the characters pretty quickly.

There were a couple throwbacks to the first book, but you can still read this one without reading the first one and enjoy it. The sequel was a little less “James Bond” than the first book. Yes, there was still some sense of it, but the story was very character driven. I really enjoyed it.

Was it as good as the first book? It was close. At the end of the first book, I couldn’t wait to see if there was more to their story. This time around, I still felt that way, just not as much. It is not a bad sequel, and it is open ended so that a third book in the series is certainly possible.

3.75 Stars out of 5.

Book Recommendation – Killers of Certain Age

I was pleasantly surprised while reading this book. Admittedly, I was drawn in by the title. I looked it up on Goodreads and after reading about it, decided to give it a shot. Here was their synopisis:

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.

The reviews I read were mixed. Some loved it – others were disappointed. I enjoyed it. One reviewer called it “The Golden Girls Meet James Bond.” I thought that was a good description, although James was more of a spy on a mission as opposed to assassins on a mission. At the same time, there were quite a few characters that made me wonder, “Should they really trust that guy?”

It all came together nicely and I would totally read about these four ladies again. Perhaps there is another story for them in the future …