Library Limelights 296

 

Deanna Kilbourn. Killers of a Certain Age. USA: Berkley/Penguin Random House LLC, 2022.

Here's a novel that some will describe as a "romp"—four women of 60-ish-age are retiring after a brilliant career as an assassination team. Trust me, this is no cartoon; they have their fun, but it's not like a James Bond parody with fantastical gizmos. It is highly entertaining with a tightly wrapped plot. The high-minded men who formed the "Museum" ‒ their euphemism for the organization – were post-war remnants of the OSS, aiming to wipe out Nazis who'd escaped to start secret lives elsewhere. Gradually they began to include corrupt, evil people anywhere. As our story begins, the three men who decide on a target and send out a team are: Thierry Carapaz (his deputy Naomi Ndiaye); Günther Paar (deputy Martin Fairbrother); and Vance Gilchrist (deputy position currently unfilled). Assassinations are usually carried out by quietly creative, but sometimes spontaneous, methods.

Our four lively ladies are given an all-expenses luxury cruise in the Caribbean as a retirement gift. Each has been trained to the max by the redoubtable Constance Halliday, as the first female squad. Each has additional specialties: Mary Alice has a gift for many languages and practices poisoning; Natalie, granddaughter of a WWII resistance fighter, is a most excellent lockpicker; refined Helen, whose father was an OSS founder, is a prime pickpocket and sharpshooter; finally, Billie is a former peace protester who develops impressive physical combat skills and often leads their planning. Flashbacks to Billie's recruitment and a few of their past assignments fill out the story perfectly.

When by chance they discover another Museum agent aboard their ship, they figure out (predictable, IMO) they've become targets themselves. The ship is to be blown to smithereens. Why the four were targeted takes longer to discover. Suffice to say, the women save the ship and their own skins in the first of many inventive ways we will see. As they elude their equally well-trained pursuers, their numbers increase: Minka is a young immigrant who was house-sitting Billie's personal safe house in New Orleans; Akiko is Mary Alice's partner, miffed at not being told until now what her beloved does for a living. Their best hope of survival is to learn why the three Museum directors made the decision to eliminate them and fix it. But inevitably, it comes down to an elimination mission. Kill or be killed, y'know.

The action never stops here, with many an argument or good-natured insult among them. Pure entertainment with smatterings of international cities, art appreciation, catacombs, financial finagling, auction houses ... disguised as spa attendants, nuns, fortune tellers, archaeology students—forty years of field experience. They are human beings, not robotic assassins, and the novel is over much too soon. Kilbourn has an impressive trail of books behind her, to be investigated.

Word: theremin - the electronic musical instrument played without physical touch.

Word: parteiadler - emblem of the Nazi party.

Helen

▪ Helen perked up a little, which might have been the work of her second mai tai. (52)

▪ "I suppose it's no use complaining about feeling decrepit when there's a bomb ticking down five feet away and I may never get any older," she said reasonably. (73)

▪ "Helen, you're the only one of us who knows how to sail. Grab anything you think we'll need." (77)

Mary Alice

▪ "That's a very 'glass is half-empty' attitude, Mary Alice," Natalie told her. (77)

▪ I started to get up, but Mary Alice stopped me. "You realize what this means? We're burning our identities. Our own identities." (77)

▪ "Not me," Mary Alice said. "I'm being cremated and letting Akiko put my ashes in a nice urn. Maybe something from Pottery Barn." (244)

Natalie

▪ "I'm not killing a dog." Nat rears back from the window, eyes wide. "I can't do it." (8)

▪ "You had a bad case of pneumonia last year," Nat reminded her. "There are at least five kinds of mold down there that aren't found anywhere else in the world." (246)

▪ "Natalie, I am tired, I am covered in mud that is at least seventy percent dead people, and I am hungry. Do not test me." (254)

Billie

▪ "I don't have time for this patriarchal bullshit," I said, whipping out a right cross that caught him on the sweet spot just below his ear. (83)

▪ "They've decided to make scapegoats of us to save whoever is behind all of this." (169)

▪ His beard and mustache are about two days past needing a trim if you mind about that sort of thing. Billie didn't. (177)

▪ "Give your libido a rest," I said. "And you're supposed to be speaking German." (248)

▪ Mary Alice stitched up my shoulder—neatly, with tiny, precise stitches. But it itched like fire, and the more it itched, the crankier I got. (278)

▪ I was gambling, not just with my life, but with everyone's. I couldn't afford to get this wrong. (308)

The job

It's simple and true. We kill for a living. A good living, in case you're interested, with a solid base salary, bonuses, and benefits—including full dental and a pension. And we kill who we're told and only who we're told. Let's get that clear right up front. We're not sociopaths. We don't murder for fun or for free. We kill to get paid. Now, Mary Alice loves her idealism and still clings to the notion of us murdering people who need killing in order to improve society. That was the official line when we were recruited, and even though times have changed—more computers and pencil pushers doing cost-benefit analyses―that part is non-negotiable. We only kill people who are specifically targeted by the Museum for extermination and we don't freelance, ever. (25)

Nailed with a mudpack

As a final flourish, I grabbed another apple with the hem of my shirt. I put it into his hand, pressing it firmly to get good fingerprints onto it. Then I lifted it to his mouth, manipulating his jaw to take a hefty bite with his toothmarks in it. It took a little maneuvering to get the bite stuffed down in his throat, but it was a pretty touch. At first glance, anybody would think he'd died of a heart attack or stroke, but anyone taking a closer look would assume he'd choked—and that would square with the modest amount of petechiae. (226)

Georgia Toews. Hey, Good Luck Out There. Ebook download from TPL. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2022.

This novel was an eye-opener to a sub-culture. I chose it because the author Georgia is the daughter of Miriam Toews, one of my most favourite authors. The unnamed protagonist is a needy young woman taken to a rehab centre for alcohol and drug addicts. Her parents are divorced, but they agree on this measure; dad himself is a drunk and mom has depression issues. She, the daughter, felt neglected, unloved, unworthy. Home was never the way she wanted it to be. Once she was on her own at college—booze, weed, and coke altered her reality enough to pretend she was "normal." Conflicting and confusing emotions continue to tongue-tie her in rehab, with counsellors and fellow inhabitants. Before long she finds that a journal gifted from her grandmother is a safe place to express her angry self in outbursts that she can't articulate verbally. A self she does not want to own.

Living for a month with other addicts who come and go for a thirty-day stay is a challenge. Relating to other people is hard without alcohol or weed. Now her daily routine revolves around basic rules, inspirational talks, group counselling, AA meetings, and personal interviews. Her boozing days were horrific—acting out wildly in public, strange men in her bed, scaring her family; some here have experienced even worse, all of them scarred in different ways. Telling lies, covering up, was endemic.

"Hey, good luck out there" is how the millennials say goodbye to each other after thirty days. Release into the real world again is not easy for her; something like Murphy's Law applies. Living in a decrepit hostel, enduring lineups for cheap apartment rentals, service jobs with superfluous demands, avoiding bars—how strong is her grip on sobriety? In her mind is a mental monster that abuses and attacks her in her nightmares. Do we recognize her behaviour? Are these street-smart, half-broken women our daughters? Our granddaughters? I feared the outcome for our young person. In my family, rehab was treated as if it were a game for superior intelligence, a system to critique. Toews' debut novel is utterly transfixing; Bravo! A dynasty in the making.

Bits (Italics are from her journal)

▪ Some women stared back at me as I looked around the room; some into their food, bored; a few smiled politely; one smirked and bared her teeth at me, laughing as she gurgled her water. (16)

▪ This is supposed to fix me? Talk fucking therapy and sad women supporting each other? (31)

▪ "But why do you think you drink? Maybe you're afraid of feeling everything if you unpack all your trauma?" (158)

▪ You're not some princess with a happy ending, you're still just a junkie slut who wants Mom and Dad to be proud. (217)

▪ What was keeping me sober? Why did I bother? (321)

▪ She started to cry, which made me cry because I felt so fucking guilty for making my mother cry in a Pickle Barrel. (325)

▪ You're just being dramatic. Play-acting, hoping it will lead to actual feelings. (331)

▪ I had actually turned him down. I felt empowered, it was the most progress I'd made so far, progress that actually mattered. (338)

▪ Kill him. Shitty, pathetic, miserable piece of excrement you'd need a hazmat suit to touch. (338)

▪ It was a misunderstanding, rehab, all of it, I saw that now. I did not identify as an alcoholic and I was not going to a meeting. (343)

▪ I told myself this is what normal people do. They meet in coffee shops and go out for a drink. They get nervous, they sweat, they feel sick and hopeless, but they ignore that feeling because this is what normal people do. (344)