I am going to confess something here… I have been a subscriber to Book of the Month for almost 2 years now, and I don’t read the books. I am always so excited to receive the books in the mail and I can’t wait to read them, but then all my library holds come in and I forget about the books I bought. I have problems. Can anyone else relate?

“Killers of a Certain Age” by Deanna Raybourn has been sitting on my shelf since 2022, so today, we read!

Synopsis

After 40 years with “The Museum,” Billie, Alice, Helen, and Natalie are facing their most difficult assignment yet… retirement. As they depart on their retirement cruise, they discover another member of their former organization, and the realization dawns on them that assassins don’t retire. Refusing to go down without a fight, the team must uncover why there is a mark on their backs and who is the party responsible for putting it there.

Impression

I try very hard to keep my expectations low and my knowledge of a book to an absolute minimum before I pick it up. Unfortunately, I was less successful at avoiding reviews for “Killers of a Certain Age,” because for a brief moment on BookTube everyone was buying or reading this book… and the reviews weren’t good. I almost unhauled this book without reading it because many of my favorite BookTubers DNFed (Did Not Finish) this particular title. However, more often than not, if the bookish community is raving about a book, I usually hate it, and while the opposite is not always true, it never hurts to give a book a chance.

“Killers of a Certain Age” is a fantastically paced book full of action, but most importantly, full of purpose. There is a reason behind the actions and decisions that these women take as they discover that they are “marked” by their company when they should be enjoying an uneventful retirement, and the lengths they are willing to go to live in peace. Told in a dual timeline with the current timeline told from Billie’s point of view, we follow Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie as they are recruited and trained for an all-female assassin team, through their career, and into the mystery of why their company wants them dead.

For anyone who doesn’t spend a lot of time with healthy people who are of a certain age, the premise of geriatric assassins may seem unbelievable. As someone who is consistently the youngest person in the room (and I just turned 40 this year), I absolutely buy this premise and enjoyed this book more because of it. I loved how this book toed the line of political correctness in the way that only 1970s feminists could complete with the grandma vulgarity that makes family holidays worth attending.

If I could compare this novel to anything it would be the Golden Girls meets Charlie’s Angels, and as far as I’m concerned, that is a win in my book.

Let’s Chat

Have you read “Killers of a Certain Age,” or anything similar to it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!