Killers of a Certain Age (2022) by Deanna Raybourn is a hit novel.

It was an easy read. But ultimately unimpressive. The BIG finale was a let down.

I ASSuMEd it was some kind of cozy murder mystery.

Not so.

It wasn’t as fun as most of the recent books with older characters.

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 ….

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.

Having read most of the very good Shari Lapena books, I went back to the beginning.

Things Go Flying (2007) was her 1st novel. Very original and interesting. Lapena was a terrific author right from the start.

Harold Walker, desperately average, is in the throes of a mid-life depression.

His wife Audrey clings to an illusory sense of control—over their home, their teenaged sons, Dylan and John, and her own explosive secret.

The death of a long-estranged friend triggers a series of perturbing events that catapults Harold out of his La-Z-Boy and throws the household into chaos.

Things go flying when the dead begin communicating with Harold, leaving Audrey’s secret vulnerable to exposure, and Harold more confused than ever.

What these familiar voices from the afterlife ultimately reveal is just how little the living know about living.

“Things Go Flying is just plain fun, a continual giggle. Hilarious, fast-paced and irreverent, it is about a modern dysfunctional family that could be yours or mine—but thank goodness it is not.” —Owen Sound Sun Times

I immediately started on Lapena’s 2nd book, Happiness Economics (2011), but got bored about half way through.

I couldn’t cheer any of the characters.

I’m enjoying the Stone Barrington series of books — but found this one to be weakest of the ones I’ve read.

Stone Barrington and his former cop partner Dino are enjoying their drinks at Elaine’s when former client and all-around sad sack Herbie Fisher walks in…in need of a lawyer.

But while Stone is trying to fend off Herbie, a more welcome potential employer appears: a beautiful woman looking for somebody who somebody else wants dead.

She takes Stone into the posh world of embassy soirees and titled privilege, where high society meets government intrigue.

And when trouble follows him from his Manhattan townhouse to his tranquil summer home in Maine, Stone has to decide what to do with the explosive information he’s uncovered.

Amazon

In general, I like the newer Prey books better than the more violent older one.

BUT Sudden Prey (1996) is fascinating.

For months, Lucas Davenport’s men have been tracking a vicious woman bank robber named Candy, and when they finally catch up with her, she does not go quietly.

In the ensuing shoot-out, she dies — and Davenport’s nightmare starts.

Her associates are even worse than she was, particularly her husband, a deeply violent man who swears an appropriate revenge: first he will find the names of those responsible; then he will kill those nearest and dearest to them, just the way they did Candy.

So it begins. The husband of one officer is shot and killed. The wife of another is ambushed at work. When a third attack is thwarted, the pattern becomes clear to Davenport, and with an urgency born of rage and terror, he presses the hunt, desperately trying to track down the killers before they can strike again, before they can reach out for Davenport’s own loved ones. But in this effort, he may already be too late.