Kills Well With Others

 

Kills Well with Others / Deanna Raybourn
NY: Berkley, c2025.
356 p.

Book Two of the Killers of a Certain Age series, this one was just as readable as the first, although maybe missing just a touch of the humour in the first volume. 

In this volume, the quartet of retired assassins (Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie) are called back into an off-the-books assignment -- there is a mole in The Museum feeding info to a criminal mastermind in Eastern Europe, who the director of The Museum things is then killing off agents who had ever been involved in working against this gangster. 

She asks the group to uncover the mole and to work to stop the powerful woman targeting them all. So the four head off on a bargain tour of Europe to do what they can. There is a similarity to the first book; quite a bit of gore, lots of women in all the roles (only a few men to serve as light interest), but there is also more focus on the relationships between the women. This was both a positive (we learn more about them) and a negative (it slows the action down a bit). The plot was fast moving with lots of twists and revelations, and the thriller element was strong. But I was a little less enamored of the flashbacks, they took you away from the pace of the crime story. 

Still, I did like this one and thought the finale was well done. And besides just the plot, there are issues of aging, friendship, loyalty, the ways the past affects the present (personally and in more of a world events sense), and more. I hope the next one returns to the more omniscent narrator (this one is largely from Billie's viewpoint) but I will likely read it no matter what. This group of women have great stories to tell!