Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn is a fun and fast-paced second book in the Killers of a Certain Age mystery series (4/5 stars)

Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn is a fun and fast-paced second book in the Killers of a Certain Age mystery series.

We pick up a little over a year since the events of the first novel. The ladies have kept in touch but have been living pretty far apart from one another, until they all receive an invitation for another project. It seems that there’s a mole in their organization and they may be the only ones to sniff them out. Off the books, of course, or the mole might figure out that they know.

I’ve had a lot of fun reading this series! I borrowed the audiobook from my local library and followed along in my physical review copy. Both narrators did a phenomenal job! Their execution, especially during humorous scenes, is fantastic. There are a couple scenes with a chicken in them where I really lost it.

The narrators have split duties in the book: one reads the present storyline and the other reads interstitial flashbacks to previous missions to provide depth for the case at hand. I said this before in my review of the first book, but I love it when authors use this kind of dual-timeline plot structure.

I’m still really enjoying Billie as our main POV character. Her sense of humor really works for me and I was overjoyed to see where she was (and who she was with) at the beginning of this book. We did get to dig a bit deeper into the lives of some of the other three ladies in this installment, which was lovely, but I would really enjoy a deeper dive into some of the other ladies. I’m especially interested in seeing what Helen does next. Natalie feels a tad bit underdeveloped, or maybe she’s just not as memorable to me as the other three ladies.

This book would be great for fans of the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman or the Vera Wong series by Jesse Q. Sutanto. All of these including folks in their 60s or older sorting out mysteries, though Killers of a Certain Age has much faster pacing and leans more into thriller than cozy mystery.

I hope we get more books in this series!

CW: murder, violence, firearms

I received a complimentary review copy from Berkley Pub and NetGalley. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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The Killers of a Certain Age series includes:

• Killers of a Certain Age
• Kills Well With Others