Plano Reads: Killers of a Certain Age

For January’s meeting of the Mystery Book Club, we are reading Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. Please join us for our first discussion of 2024 on Thursday, January 18 at 7pm at Davis Library or you can attend through Zoom. If you would like to attend the meeting virtually, please register here.

Available in Print | eBook | eAudio

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 by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

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.

–Provided by publisher

Four female assassins on the brink of retirement are brought back into the game by a surprising assassination attempt—on them.

Since they were recruited in their 20s, Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have been working as secret assassins for a clandestine international organization originally created to hunt Nazis. Now they’re in their mid-60s, and the Museum—as its denizens call the elite group—has sent them on an all-expenses-paid cruise to celebrate their retirement. Several hours into the trip, though, Billie discovers another of the Museum’s assassins onboard the ship. It turns out that she and her colleagues have uncovered a plot to end their own lives. They’re forced to flee while simultaneously solving the mystery of why their employers have put targets on their backs. The story jumps back and forth between the late 1970s and early ’80s, when the women were first recruited, to the present day, when the female assassins have all lived long, full lives and worry about menopause and lost spouses more than whom they might kill next. Juxtaposing the two timelines creates an interesting dichotomy that examines the nuances of the female aging process from a unique angle. The writing is witty and original, and the plot is unpredictable; Billie is a complex and likable character, but the other three women, while easy to root for, tend to blend together. As the women race around the world trying to stay alive, Raybourn vividly evokes a number of far-flung locations while keeping readers on their toes trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.

A unique examination of womanhood as well as a compelling, complex mystery.

– Copyright Kirkus Reviews

New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia.

Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including the Edgar, the Macavity, and the Agatha. She launched a new Victorian mystery series with the 2015 release of A Curious Beginning, featuring intrepid butterfly-hunter and amateur sleuth, Veronica Speedwell. Deanna’s first contemporary thriller, Killers of a Certain Age, published in September of 2022 at #9 on the New York Times bestseller list. This novel won the 2022 Barry Award for Best Thriller.

-From the author’s website

Read-alike titles available through the Plano Public Library catalog and Libby app: 

• An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten Print | eBook
• The Old Woman with the Knife by Byeong-mo Gu Print | eBook
• The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen Print
• The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club series #3) by Richard Osman Print | eBook | eAudio
• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto Print | eBook | eAudio