Killers of a Certain Age – Book Review

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.

If you have Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, then you will like this book as well. This story involves four former assassins–Billie, Natalie, Helen and Mary Anne who worked for an organization called the Museum . Their job involves killing Nazis then gradually to terrorists and Dictators and other deemed bad people. Now they have retired from their official duties and embarked on a cruise ship that was meant for them. But then the four women realize that someone is out to get them–someone from the Museum want to get rid of them. And so Billie, Natalie, Helen and Mary Ann escape from the cruise and then set out to find who was responsible for their near death experience and get rid of them all.

This was an interesting story. The plotline was interesting. The story kind of divides between past set in 1970s, 80’s and 90’s when the four women were working for the Museum and the present day, where they embark on a journey to England. I just like the friendship and camaraderie between the four women. Although the story line was interesting, intriguing and not to mention there were funny parts that would make you laugh out loud, I felt that overall, the plotline wasn’t realistic. The women are all in their sixties in the present day and seem to be communicating the way twenty-year-olds do. The present day was told in Billie’s POV while the past was told in third person point of view. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the book, I thought the pacing in the book was OK. The writing was great however.

This book is the first book of the series so maybe hopefully, I am looking forward for the second book. Overall this is worth only 3.5 stars.