Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! “This Golden Girls meets James Bond thriller is a journey you want to be part of.” -Buzzfeed 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.

DNF. 10% in, listening to audiobook #libbyapp. Bored as hell. Not nearly entertaining or satisfying as Veronica Speedwell or Julia Grey, which I can hardly put down.

Fun read as a stand alone, but it could also totally work as the first book in a series. I'd probably read a sequel.

What I loved about this book is that these four women, all aged 60 use the invisibility of ageism to their advantage time and time again. If that is not the ultimate societal truism- far more than the virility and vitality of James Bond or the equivalent head turning beauty of a young Charlies Angels type. Old women are invisible and thus they can get away with murder. Now understand me- anyone reading this knows that 60 isn't OLD- but it's also not young and it's not sexy, not by conventional standards. These women age themselves by decades more in order to play up this idea that old people are harmless, and can thus be ignored. Then add in their decades of traditional training. Sure they can fire guns and blow things up, but they are taught the subtle art of killing- quietly and surreptitiously. The ingenious ways they kill people in this book astonished me. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these four women: their specialties, their histories, both shared and individual, and also how they lived through and understood, first sexism, then ageism and how they used both to their advantage and for their survival. This would make a killer movie. Highly recommend this one and it is a FUN read.