November 1979. Four young female flight attendants prepare for the arrival of VIP guests on a private flight. But instead of making the passengers comfortable, the women are there to murder them in Deanna Raybourn's rousing, jet-paced thriller Killers of a Certain Age, a Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2022.
Billie, Helen, Mary Alice and Natalie were recruited by an organization they called the Museum, which trained assassins to neutralize dictators across the globe, as part of Project Sphinx, the very first all-female assassin squad. The Sphinxes always worked together on missions, and their combined talents made them unstoppable. After 40 years, the four killers, now in their 60s, have retired. Their employers mark the occasion with an all-expenses-paid cruise to the West Indies. While enjoying Bloody Marys on the ship, Billie spots a junior field operative for the Museum. There's only one reason for his presence on board: he's on a job. And his mark(s): one or all four of his former colleagues. What follows is an explosive chase as the Sphinxes try to stay alive.
It's clear how much Raybourn (the Lady Julia Grey series) enjoys writing about their adventures. The body count is high, but so is the number of chuckles elicited by observations from Billie and her teammates. If they were underestimated as younger women, they've become even more invisible as older women, which they use to their advantage. The action scenes are as cinematic as set pieces from a James Bond movie. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis