The Empress Book Club: KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE by Deanna Raybourn
Reading and Discussion Guide (Spoilers!) 📚🕵️♀️
Fellow Empresses,
If you’re squeamish about spoilers, be forewarned… the below guide contains them!
My thoughts thus far… I am about halfway through the novel and it’s breezy. I feel like I’m only just getting to know the women because their backstories have been a bit spare, but now that they’ve landed in New Orleans, each is gaining her own flavor.
It does have a distinctly Golden Girls comedic tone to it. Some of the menopausal symptoms feel like they’ve been slightly bolted on during an edit. I think the biggest question I have is the plausibility of accidentally assassinating someone that you actually needed to question… due to brain fog. Do I buy it? There’s a wonderful essay by Mona Eltahawy of FEMINIST GIANT that touches on the topic of such inadvertent ass-kicking scenarios that makes me think it is possible…
In the meantime, here is the reading and discussion guide from the publisher:
Introduction
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.
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