Deadly Pleasures to Read and Watch

The lone-wolf hero is a familiar figure in crime fiction, but two new books by Deanna Raybourn and Juan Gómez-Jurado attest to the advantages of collaboration. That the female assassins in Kills Well with Others collaborate on murder flips the script somewhat—shouldn’t they be solving crimes together?—but, as they like to say, the world would be a better place without their targets.

Natalie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Billie were introduced in Killers of a Certain Age (2022), where they made quite an impression as 60-ish assassins for a private entity known as the Museum, who were targeted for extinction by someone inside the organization.