Kills Well with Others
“Raybourn’s reliably skillful plot twists and nimble writing, along with dialogue that should have a warning label (about choking with laughter), make this one of the liveliest crime novels of the season.”
The opening chapter of Kills Well with Others reaches back to 1982, when a four-woman professional assassination team undercover at a Playboy Club (ouch, those push-up bras and bottom pinches) manages to kill the wrong person. It’s an entertaining leap toward the team’s call back into action in “the present.” Age may have settled them a bit—for example, Billie lives with her lover most of the time now, a man who adores her enough to say “Get out of here and go kill somebody. I’ll be waiting when you get back.”
But there’s something off about their new assignment. Cheap air tickets, cut-rate hotel rooms, and lack of official status let the women guess they’re operating off the books. Maybe they’ve got to correct someone else’s error? Uncertainties and uncomfortable maneuvers might be wort it, though, for the sake of bringing them back together, a situation Billie describes as being with the people she loves most, and a job that’s never left her: “I was playing at being retired because the truth was, I would be a killer until the day I died.”
Trust Deanna Raybourn, with more than a dozen entertaining mysteries that feature clever and satisfying women, to turn this situation into both humor and romance. After all, this team would never kill someone who didn’t deserve it! In this case, they’re after Russian criminals, who in turn are trying to kill, well, them. In general, Billie knows, “The person you’re supposed to kill has been chosen for a good reason. Whatever contract exists between human beings, a contract of decency and humanity, they’ve broken it.” So the friends will set up yet another well-justified murder, although there’s always a cost, as Billie admits to herself: “You know that every time you do, you’ve left another piece of yourself behind.”
For Billie, this has been both the kind of work she adores, and the kind that she figures sabotages her relationship with Taverner. She assumes he wants her to play helpless, so he can play hero. After all, he’s already told her, “You are the strongest woman I have ever known . . . And if you just once in a decade or two, let me do something for you, the world wouldn’t come to a screeching halt.” But she can’t see it that way.
After several equivalents of high-speed chases, some in odd vehicles and over deadly bridges, the team finally identifies the treasure both sides have been chasing and narrows down the opposition. Of course, by this point one of them is garbed as a nun, they’re transporting a live chicken, and who knows whether they have any backup for the anticipated gunfight ahead?
Lively language, perfect-size morsels of suspense and danger, impressive martial arts, and here are four women thinking: Can they complete the assigned caper under these conditions? Sure, why not? But whether Billie and Taverner can resolve their quandary is going to depend on two stubborn people finding the right compromise—or maybe just the right resolution to a dangerous episode that could kill them all.
Raybourn’s reliably skillful plot twists and nimble writing, along with dialogue that should have a warning label (about choking with laughter), make this one of the liveliest crime novels of the season. This is the second book inn her series that began with Killers of a Certain Age, but there’s no need to read one before the other. Of course, buying both at once is wise anyway, for double the fun.