Killers of a Certain Age is a peculiar and novel approach to the assassin-thriller subgenre and it’s one that works hilariously well.
Deanna Raybourn tells a fascinating tale of a group of female assassins who’ve just reached retirement at 60 years of age. What starts off as a fun cruise to commemorate this achievement quickly turns murderous when they realize they’ve been marked for termination by their former employee, an organization codenamed The Museum. Underestimated by the younger assassins, the retired group of femme fatales take the fight to the Board of the Museum, utilizing decades of contacts and wits and experience to turn the tide in their favor and show the younger generation that youth doesn’t trump experience as easily as one might expect.
The female voice lends tremendous credence to the highly entertaining, charming, and multi-dimensional female leads in this witty thriller. Deanna Raybourn portrays characters with balanced personalities whom you can actually picture as believable. Each assassin comes with her own set of skills and they master their craft with utmost precision, some however weathered by tragedies and existential crises appropriate for their ages.
The narrative switches between the present-day first person POV of Billie, arguably the take-charge leader of the group, and a third person POV that paints a broader picture of the mess these lovely assassins have landed themselves in. This wonderful switch-up makes it much easier to follow along the storyline with the back-and-forth of the timelines.
Even at the spry age of 60, the assassins don’t hold back on kicking ass. The action sequences are swift, powerful, and grounded enough to show the change of fighting tactics with age with grace and lethal efficiency and none of the flashy showboat-y martial arts moves that wouldn’t make sense. The emphasis, as rightfully so for the assassins, is to incapacitate targets quickly and smartly.
Deanna Raybourn has created a fascinating brand-new world of killers existing stealthily in the modern world. Color me highly impressed! I can’t wait to read more stories with these hilarious batch of characters.
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