Halloween Bingo 2024
This book was interesting just because it was quite different from what I expected. I guess I thought it would be more like Killers of a Certain Age or The Thursday Murder Club, which have a certain humour to them. After all, the protagonist is an older woman who has been an assassin as a career, which sounds rather like those novels. Instead, I got a meditation on the decrease of abilities as one ages, the difficulty of making friends after a lifetime of self-isolation, and the unintended consequences of earlier deeds in one’s life.
Hornclaw suspects that her employer is thinking of removing her from the payroll. She isn’t getting as many jobs as she used to and a younger coworker seems to be trying to make her life miserable. Perhaps he’s been instructed to mess up her jobs and her confidence to make the employer’s wish easier? In the meanwhile, she makes the “mistake” of getting to know some of her neighbours. She has always maintained distance in the past, realizing it’s more difficult to kill people that you know.
She knows that she’s not as strong or as fast as she used to be. Her joints hurt and it’s harder to dodge blades or bullets. But her appearance as a small, older woman is useful camouflage which she can employ quite effectively. Occasionally she considers giving up, but it hasn’t come to that yet.
Are her problems all that different than those of other seniors? Declining physical abilities, social isolation, and a changing society that no longer values her? Her profession exaggerates these problems, but many seniors will recognize them.
I read this book to fulfill the Death in Translation square of my Halloween Bingo card.
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