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 in this action-packed thriller.
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.
Comment: I'm in the process of reading the Veronica Speedwell series by this author and now a friend has joined me. While talking about it, this stand alone title came up and we have decided to also try it, even though it is a very different type of book and genre from the other series. I confess I wasn't particularly eager to read this one and if not for the buddy read, I might not even get it, but...
In this book we meet Billie, who narrates the story of how she and three friends were recruited around forty years ago to be spies and assassins. They only met because of the "job" but since they were part of a new founded only girls team, they developed strong bonds, especially because they had to trust each other. Now that they are in their 60s, they are retiring and the company they work for, "the Museum" has given them a cruise voyage as goodbye for services rendered. However, they quickly realize they aren't supposed to leave the cruise alive and go on a new and personal mission to find out who made the decision and why they are being persecuted. Will they discover what is happening before someone is lucky in getting to them first?
As I expected, it was easy to read this book. The author is clearly talented and not just in the genre I'm more familiar with, so it was interesting to compare with this one, which is different. The author knows how to write and how to convey things in a very relatable manner, but I have to say I wasn't always as aware of what the purpose of this story was...in terms of plot it is obvious, but what else was it about? I don't think it did have a specific goal so sometimes I felt rather ambivalent towards everything.
The story is fast paced and has all the expected scenes and situations one would find in any spying type of book or like in the James Bond movies. The four ladies might be in their 60s but they have a life of experience and purpose which allows them to do things many wouldn't and the fact they are older means many underestimate them. I found these scenes to be amusing at times and very entertaining, because I think the author also wanted to convey a lighter, more comedy-like vibe, instead of just a study on age or women's role in these types of stories.
There are also a few - thankfully in my opinion - flashback chapters where certain issues or comments are fully addressed, for us to have a context on them or for certain skills of the ladies to be explained. I don't think this was truly that necessary because if it's in the past, nothing really can be done about that information, and being random flashbacks, I often thought the important subject they are demonstrating could be shared in a better way in the present narrative. Some I also found were way more interesting than others.
The ladies themselves are certainly fascinating. I know many readers thought their personalities weren't very fleshed out, except for the narrator, but I think we can have a pretty good idea about each one and what type of person (and of killer) they are. But it is also true that if this is told by Billie, her vision is obviously limited and I feel that, thinking about that, it also feels as if Billie is the one we get to understand more whereas the others feel more like secondary.
The most interesting and noticeable element in the book is clearly the fact the protagonists are older women, in their 60s. This is very obviously the focus of the novel and I can't really say if I'm glad the author did it and with this gave the story a completely different perspective than it would be if they were younger. But it also felt as if most of their lives were only centered on the job, Billie in particular, and the whole thing about them not being well fleshed out might be related to this... who are these women apart from killers?
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