{"id":4554,"date":"2022-08-31T07:45:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T14:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4554"},"modified":"2022-08-31T07:45:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T14:45:53","slug":"deanna-raybourn-killers-of-a-certain-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/deanna-raybourn-killers-of-a-certain-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Deanna Raybourn: Killers of a Certain Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This book is an absolute blast.\u00a0 Hilarious, well plotted, exciting, packed with interesting characters, it is definitely the most fun I\u2019ve had reading a book all year.\u00a0 As I have read a few books lately with detectives who are on the older side, I thought I knew what to expect, but I was so, so wrong.\u00a0 Raybourn\u2019s \u201cKillers\u201d are 60 something female assassins who are on a retirement cruise. They are a little puzzled by the cruise but are determined to enjoy each other\u2019s company, the food, and the booze. Their collective bad-assery is a far remove from Jane Marple\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The retirement cruise goes badly wrong, however, when one of the women notices a fellow assassin on board, working undercover as crew.\u00a0 They realize there\u2019s a hit on them and they then go to elaborate lengths to escape while not harming anyone else on the ship (one of the rules of their operation: no collateral damage).\u00a0 They do escape but then they are faced with a dilemma: their organization, for some reason, wants to kill them, and they no longer have the back up and resources they enjoyed as assassins working for their \u201cfirm\u201d, referred to as \u201cThe Museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raybourn goes back and forth in time, setting up her story.\u00a0 The four women were all recruited around college age and whisked to a \u201cschool\u201d in England where they learned their trade.\u00a0 The woman in charge of the school wants to unleash some female furies on the world, ridding the world of Nazis and other unsavory types.\u00a0 Nazis start to die out of course, but the women are kept busy never-the-less.\u00a0 The women, who were recruited in the mid to late 1970\u2019s, are now old enough to feel it in their knees when they are on a strenuous job.<\/p>\n

Raybourn then proceeds to pepper her story with short little jewels \u2013 stories where the women ply their trade, then and now.\u00a0 Each episode is so delicious it\u2019s almost sad when they reach their inevitable end.\u00a0 The smarts it took to put these vignettes together is massive.\u00a0 Every detail is perfect, and often funny. \u00a0My favorite was when the quartet dress as nuns, but you have to read it for yourself. Each episode also, miraculously, advances the plot and fleshes out the characters.<\/p>\n

While the women are without their more or less corporate back up, they are not without resources.\u00a0 They still have all their different skill sets, and they have Minka, a young Ukrainian who lives with Billie in her wreck of a safe house in New Orleans.\u00a0 Minka\u2019s got game and a bit later in the story she\u2019s responsible for one of the most hilarious phone apps of all time.\u00a0 Again, you\u2019ll have to read it for yourself, I won\u2019t ruin it for you.<\/p>\n

When these women team up, they are unstoppable.\u00a0 They all have issues \u2013 for example, one is a widow; one hasn\u2019t told her spouse exactly what she does for a living \u2013 but they work through it.\u00a0 Their training holds as they meet their challenge, and it\u2019s a blast watching them do it.\u00a0 If you are of a \u201ccertain age\u201d yourself, you\u2019ll appreciate the references and<\/em> the sore knees.\u00a0 Run, don\u2019t walk, to pick up a copy of this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book is an absolute blast.\u00a0 Hilarious, well plotted, exciting, packed with interesting characters, it is definitely the most fun I\u2019ve had reading a book all year.\u00a0 As I have read a few books lately with detectives who are on the older side, I thought I knew what to expect, but I was so, so … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[189,757,484,909,908,910,918,13],"class_list":["post-4554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-berkley","tag-deanna-raybourn","tag-humor","tag-killers-of-a-certain-age","tag-older-assassins","tag-retirement-cruise-gone-wrong","tag-sore-knees","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4565,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions\/4565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}