Agent: Pamela Hopkins, Hopkins Literary Assoc. I love this book. Fans of Helen Tursten and Richard Osman will relish watching these badass women in their 60s (“no one notices you unless you want them to,” Billie observes) swing into action. Killers of a Certain Age is the 60-something lady assassin book we didn’t know we needed, but, oh, we needed it. National treasure Deanna Raybourn never fails to enchant with her signature.

Colorful regional details and vividly portrayed secondary characters flesh out this rollicking tale. Now their talents are considered old-school. Flashbacks to several of their high-profile cases, including a Zanzibar hit on an aging baroness that comes back to haunt Billie, keep the reader guessing. Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Killers of a Certain Age is a singular suspense story thanks to its deftly fluctuating tone, which is by turns comical, violent and unexpectedly affecting. They immediately go into investigative overdrive, relying on their expert training and experiences to uncover the means and motives behind their potential demise. Soon after they’re forced to go on an all-expenses-paid retirement cruise in the Caribbean, they discover they’ve apparently been targeted for death by the Museum board. Billie, Mary Alice, Natalie, and Helen have been a cozy quartet of “avenging goddesses” for more than 40 years, one of the “most elite assassin squads on earth,” recruited in late 1978 by an “extra governmental” organization called the Museum. Edgar finalist Raybourn (the Speedwell series) makes a dazzling excursion out of the Victorian era with this uproarious contemporary thriller.

Review killers of a certain age