I love action movies with female leads. Turns out, women doing the killing and saving really works for me and this series scratches that itch.

I know the Bitchery are probably sick of me climbing onto my high horse about blurbs, but I found this one misleading. I don’t think the person that wrote that blurb read the book carefully enough. The broad strokes are there, but the details aren’t right.

Billie, Helen, Natalie and Mary Alice haven’t worked together since the events of book one (which Sarah reviewed and really enjoyed. I loved it too!) and this time they’re working off the books. There is a mole in the Museum (the shadowy organisation they work for) and Naomi, their director, tasks them with figuring out who maybe bought, maybe extorted the information out of the mole because one agent (who was revealed through this data leak) has already been killed.

The foursome have very little information to work with initially. I really love a book where I do not know where it is going, but each step makes perfect sense as it is happening. The plot crosses the globe and involves quite a lot of killing and conniving. I loved it!

Billie is the narrator of the present day sections in his novel, and so we learn the most about her. She is in a situationship with Taverner, another Museum assassin. Taverner loves Billie a great deal, but Billie is so hesitant to commit.

I confess that sometimes I get Mary Alice and Natalie confused. But I am 99% sure that that is a me problem due to my less than extraordinary memory. But I thoroughly enjoyed all the third-person flashbacks to previous hits from the 80s and 90s. Some of them informed the plot and others were more about revealing relationships or important growth points.

This book wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny for me, but it was sharp and witty and a delight. There is some squabbling between the foursome, but most of the time it has no real bite to it and it’s great fun to read. It was so easy to feel the depth of the connections between these four women through their dialogue.

I don’t want to reveal too much because so much happens in this story. As is the test for any new parent, did I sacrifice precious, precious sleep to read this book? Yes, I did, but crucially it did not cross over into a Bad Decisions Book Club. For me, that’s the tipping point between a good book and a great book. I hold out hope for more good and great books in this most enjoyable series.