Killers of a Certain Age

Helen comes from an upper-class background and is well-educated, the daughter of a member of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Her family background is important because it leads her to recruitment by the Museum. Of the four, Helen is the most detail-oriented, spending much of the group’s first mission zeroing in on a run in Billie’s pantyhose that Billie herself hardly notices (3). Helen is an expert with firearms, impressing even Halliday with her accuracy and skill.

In the present day, Helen is a shadow of her formerly vivacious and precise self, devastated by her recent widowhood. In response, Billie tries to renew her interest in life by asking for her help when she first realizes there is an assassin on board their retirement cruise. Early on, Helen seems resigned to the prospect of death, telling Billie that “I suppose if we die tonight, I’m okay with it” (74) though she also resents being patronized and manages the emotional intensity of the grieving process, indicating she has not given up hope. Helen is cautious, hesitating to trust Billie’s protege, Minka. She keeps an extensive list of Museum contacts in an old-fashioned address book, a detail Raybourn includes to emphasize that older methods still yield success. But Helen fails to assassinate a fellow agent when Billie prompts her to, leading Billie to worry about her skills and reliability.

Though Billie treats Helen as fragile, Helen has her own protective streak, urging Billie to protect Minka from the kinds of losses and sacrifices they made when they were young. Without consulting Billie, she calls in Taverner for backup as they set their trap for Vance, telling Billie gently, “Lonesome is habit […] one that can be broken,” (302) subtly urging her to talk to her former love. Helen is able to recover her marksmanship skills in time to save Billie’s life and ends the narrative resolved to start a new life in England at Benscombe House, which her husband purchased before his death. Helen ends the narrative able to move forward in her grief by putting down roots and seeking a new stability for her new stage of life.

Mary Alice is the group’s idealist, poison expert, and, in some respects, traditionalist. She is recruited for Project Sphinx because her family’s tragic losses in Vietnam lead her to become a harsh critic of war and advocate for justice. During her work, she becomes an expert in distilling rare and untraceable poisons. Halliday notes that she is a particular asset because of her curvy figure and conventionally attractive features, so men will continually be drawn to her and also underestimate her. Mary Alice is amused by this in her youth.

In the present day, Mary Alice has survived breast cancer and is happily married to her wife Akiko, who knows nothing of her professional life and thinks she is an accountant, which is the work Mary Alice does to earn money between assassination jobs (32). The realization she is the target for assassination particularly horrifies her since she will have to let Akiko believe she has died. Ultimately, she decides to contact her wife and tell her the truth though she knows Akiko will be dismayed by the years of deception and unlikely to accept the new reality. She eagerly embraces Billie’s plan to take out the Museum’s directors so that she and Akiko can resume normal lives with their beloved cat, Kevin.

Mary Alice frequently squabbles with Natalie, who is less reserved and more open about sex than Mary Alice is comfortable with. She resents Billie for calling Akiko a “problem” (101) though the two quickly reconcile. By the end of the narrative, Mary Alice and Akiko have embarked on a newly honest phase of their marriage and are eager to travel the world together.

Natalie is the group’s most effusive personality, in keeping with her skills with weaponry and explosives, especially “the biggest guns she can get her hands around” (125). The great-granddaughter of Russian Jewish radicals and the granddaughter of a Dutch resistance fighter, Natalie discovers her roots when she is recruited for the Museum because Halliday knew her family. With a zest for life and no shame about her sexual appetites, Natalie’s romantic life becomes an important source of intelligence for the group. Her past relationship with Museum member Sweeney leads the friends to seek him out as a possible source of information as to why they are being targeted. Her history of visiting the Parisian catacombs makes her a natural partner for Billie during their assassination efforts there.

Natalie is deeply loyal and highly emotional. She feels remorse over Sweeney’s death, betraying emotional exhaustion with the moral dilemmas of their work. She tells Billie she has “a chia seed of hate” (187) for her friend’s relative unflappability about murder but assures her she would instantly protect her on a job. Natalie eventually admits that they cannot choose a quiet life of retreat but must go after their enemies. This is her only moment of doubt, and by the time the work closes she is happily planning a retreat to Japan to study art, her other passion.

Constance is one of the founders of the Museum. A British woman, she served in intelligence in World War II as part of the Special Operations Executive, an organization that conducted espionage and sabotage in the Nazi-occupied territories. Her all-female squad was called the Furies, named after the avengers of Greek myth. She is the group’s lone survivor and dedicates herself to training new agents and continuing the cause of bringing Nazis, war criminals, and other human rights abusers to justice. Her brother, Richard, also a former SOE member, helps her recruit for her new all-female squad, Project Sphinx. She names them for the Greek mythical creatures that have feminine features but are also predators with the heads of lions.

Constance is formidable and strict, telling Natalie, “you may swear on your own time but at Benscombe your time belongs to me” (91). She helps all four women develop their specific skills, pushing Billie to work harder and nurturing her love of hand-to-hand combat. Constance reminds Billie that she must depend on others and embrace the “joy” she finds in her work (132). These teachings inspire Billie in her fight with Vance, and the women return to Benscombe to stage their last stand. Constance epitomizes the women’s embracing of their past as their legacy and sparks their awareness of myths and legends of powerful women as they carry out their work.

Vance enters the narrative as a kind of mentor figure since he leads the first mission for the four members of Project Sphinx. He and his co-worker openly assess the attractiveness of all four women, seeing them as sex objects more than equals. However, Vance does encourage Billie when she shows nervousness.

The two clash on a mission a few years later, because Vance is obsessed with being the agent in charge of a mission to assassinate an elderly Nazi, Baroness Elizabeth von Waldenheim. He is outraged when Billie stabs the baroness with knitting needles to save his life, accusing her of undermining him and disparaging her skills. Vance uses Martin Fairbrother’s treachery to set a trap for Billie, assuming she has not realized he tracked her location to Benscombe. Later, she reminds him that it is “ageist” to assume she did not intend to draw him out for her own reasons, and she and her team unleash explosives on his guards and agents (329). Remembering her mentor’s lessons, Billie bests him in hand-to-hand combat. The fact that she stabs him with a hair barrette underscores that her femininity, which he has always denigrated, is in fact one of her greatest assets when wielded appropriately. Defeating Vance is thus an important symbolic defeat against misogyny.

A mild-mannered member of the Museum, Martin is second-in-command of its Acquisitions department, titled a “curator,” and his responsibility is to outfit the assassination squads for their missions. All four members of Project Sphinx are fond of him, and Billie contacts him as a trusted intelligence source to find out more about the internal politics behind the attack on them.

After the group’s second assassination, Billie finds a dossier that proves Martin planted evidence that she and her friends were corrupt and killing clients for money. He is caught by Vance when the latter realizes Martin is trying to become head of the Museum by having the four women murder the department heads, a move which would allow him to become acting agency head. Vance uses Martin to set a trap for Billie, using the auction of the painting. When Billie and the others succeed in eliminating Vance and his team, Martin uses the chaos to take Billie captive, seeing her as his escape route, and Helen shoots him to save Billie’s life. Billie and Naomi recognize Martin’s egotistical underestimation of them both, making him one in a long line of men who pay for failing to recognize their power and worth.

Naomi is a highly skilled agent and expert in foreign languages, serving as the deputy head of the Museum’s Provenance department, which is in charge of intelligence gathering. Billie and the others are reluctant to contact Naomi for information about the danger they are facing, assuming she helped produce the false intelligence that led to the plot against them.

Naomi is no-nonsense and brisk, telling Billie she can ask “one question” about who framed them (166), but ultimately telling Billie that the Board has decided to protect a corrupt agent and blame them rather than expose the real traitor (168). Naomi is on medical leave due to a high risk-pregnancy but flies to England once she realizes Martin has left the US for London. She tracks him to Benscombe and calmly convinces Helen not to kill her, assuring her she is no threat as long as they do not endanger her baby. She reveals she had some evidence Martin was a traitor but not enough to frame him and was “betting” (342) the women would save their own lives and bring him to justice. Her identity as a Black woman and a mother showcases the ways the Museum can modernize under new leadership, becoming open to more expansive visions of who can be a professional assassin. Billie is especially reassured when Naomi shows her expertise in art history, recognizing one of Constance’s paintings of the goddess of justice. Naomi thus shows she understands the values Billie fights for in ways the men around her never have.

Taverner is a British member of the Museum and also an assassin. Billie and Taverner meet in 1981 and are instantly drawn to one another despite agency protocols forbidding fraternization. Taverner and Billie ultimately part ways because he wants marriage and a family and she cannot give up her career. Billie is chagrined when she realizes he had believed her dead, seeing her failure to contact him as a sign she has forgotten how to trust and confide in people who care about her. Taverner eventually forgives her and agrees to help with the trap for Vance. He tells Billie he had no intention of forcing her into marriage, and he never lost hope for the two of them. He is the narrative’s rare example of a man who respects and values women as his equals. Billie plans to reunite with him in Greece at the end of the novel.