Four friends work together as an elite assassination team for decades, from college to retirement. When they are on their retirement celebration cruise, they soon learn it is now they who are being hunted by the very company who employed them all those years.
Welcome to “Likely Stories.”I’m Diane Kemper.
Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie were fresh faced and full of life in their twenties when The Museum, an entire network of assassins, recruited them from all over the country, one from the University of Texas. They have donned disguises, jumped out of airplanes, traveled the world, killed dozens of bad guys in various ways, and done all the super spy/professional killer hijinks we love. In all of this, they have somehow been able to find love, get married, well maybe a divorce or two, have children, and enjoy regular middle class lives.
But now there is a problem. All those years of secrecy, diligence, and dedication to their jobs, and now The Museum wants them gone. They were the best, and never failed one mission. They were the team The Museum could always count on, and now they want the ladies dead.
The novel takes us on quite a ride in both present day and back to how it all began. We are shown the exhausting and often excruciatingly painful first training. We learn that all four girls are very different in their personalities and family backgrounds, but this all makes them capable in a variety of roles as one unit. They bond as only you can in plotting and carrying out murders, and are the best of friends, even if they do still at times irritate each other.
So now, here they are, the stalked instead of doing the stalking. They aren’t in their twenties anymore. They are all in their sixties. A lifetime of action has kept them in glorious shape, but the ibuprofen is passed around after a chase or fight. They aren’t about to give in, and they take on the entire Museum network of spies and killers in order to save themselves and each other. Older woman usually feel invisible, but that’s their secret weapon. No one sees them coming, or believes they can still do what they did as young women. There is quite a twist at the end as they try to stay alive.
Usually, a book has a character of a woman in her sixties who is unsteady on her feet and has the first signs of dementia. Not these girls! They are still kicking butt and taking names. How they plan to survive to see their seventies will take all their moxie and expertise.
“Killers of a Certain Age,” by Deanna Raybourn. Sign me up for this group of friends!