Martinis and Murder in Maine
BOOK REVIEW: THE SUMMER GUESTS: A THRILLER
By: Tess Gerritsen / Thomas & Mercer
Reviewed by: Jay and Anne Gruner
The Reviewers — Jay Gruner served as CIA Station Chief in four countries and as an area division chief, later founding J.K. Gruner Associates, a business intelligence consultancy. His wife, Anne, a former career CIA analyst and Deputy Chief of WINPAC, is a previous Pushcart-nominee with fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and book reviews in over twenty print and online publications. The Gruners live in McLean, Virginia with their two golden retrievers.
REVIEW — Tess Gerritsen’s sequel to The Spy Coast is a gripping account of a complex set of murders, a possible recent kidnaping, and a secretary missing for 50 years in Purity, a small, picturesque coastal town in Maine. Here, four CIA officers, retired and enjoying life, play a key role in deciphering what has happened in the present and the past and who is responsible. Known as the Martini Club, the ageing retirees led by Maggie Bird are a talented group from different divisions of the Agency who meet weekly to discuss whatever book they’re reading and to enjoy high quality cocktails. However, when a trusted neighbor and friend of Maggie’s becomes a suspect in a kidnapping, they put down their martini glasses and pick up their spy glasses.
Jo Thibodeau, Purity’s Acting Police Chief, had worked productively with the Martini Club on an earlier case, but is reluctant to collaborate officially with them, given their lack of official status and opposition from prosecutors and senior state police officials. However, challenged by the complexities and magnitude of the incidents she faces, she works out a modus operandi with them as they find ways to assist her on multiple cases.
The action, which can be described as a nail-biting thriller, begins with an account of multiple, violent murders from the distant past in 1972. Fast forward to the present, we encounter several seemingly unrelated, but disturbing, events for a small town filled with summer tourists enjoying the seaside. Matters get serious when bad things begin to happen to prominent families who are long-time summer residents living along the lake in Purity. An FBI agent, who is disdainful of Police Chief Thibodeau, is called into the town when a teenager from a prominent summer family goes missing. Clues suggest she may have been kidnapped, but when the lake is finally checked, a decomposed body is discovered. There are many twists and turns as the FBI, Thibodeau, and the Martini Club compete and cooperate in the search for the missing girl or her body. As they do so, ghosts from the town’s past keep popping into the plot. Mysteries are resolved only to raise new ones in a “who-done-it and why” that keeps the reader guessing and reading until the end. The idyllic charm of the Maine coast and the village of Purity fades and tumbles as the reader begins to grasp the true nature of occurrences which have led to violence and havoc in the community over decades. The connections are unexpected, and the revelations are surprising, as seemingly unrelated incidents come together in an imaginative plot that is a page turner.
The colorful but talented members of the Martini Club led by Maggie Bird begin to aggressively pursue the various leads which emerge, with tension increasing among its members and between them and Police Chief Thibodeau, who eventually decides they are more helpful than a hindrance. This is especially true when it appears that a CIA issue of national significance might be involved. Throughout their tumultuous and occasionally life-threatening crises, the members of the Martini Club maintain their sang-froid and then some as they focus their lifelong skills on domestic fact-finding, collection, and analysis to help resolve the town’s enigmatic disturbances.
Like its predecessor, The Summer Guests is a compelling, easy-to-read story, with enjoyable and interesting characters. Despite the involvement of CIA retirees, it is not an espionage novel or a tale of intelligence services fighting each other, though the tools of intelligence operations used by the members of the Martini Club help resolve the matters at hand.
Terri Gerritsen is a skilled author known not only for the Martini Club novels but her earlier work of the “Rizzoli & Isles team.” We look forward to her next book in the series which we understand is due out in the fall of 2026.
Editor’s Note: For more on author Tess Gerritsen, check out our 2024 Cover Stories podcast interview with her here.
The Summer Guests earns an impressive 3.5 out of 4 trench coats
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