BOOK REVIEW: THE SHADOW FRIENDS
By Tess Gerritsen / Thomas & Mercer
Reviewed by: Susan Gorgioski
The Reviewer — Susan Gorgioski is a writer who has worked in law and publishing in Australia. She is currently researching a novel set in WWII Shanghai.
REVIEW:
The Russians have been a mainstay of spy thrillers and they are always worthy adversaries. Tess Gerritsen's The Shadow Friends continues with the tradition. Gerritsen has a fine pedigree as a thriller writer. Her early novels produced some gripping and creepy stories. She is also the creator of the very successful Rizzoli and Isles series. She returns to the genre with the Martini Club thrillers, which are arguably part of that rediscovered subgenre: Cosy Crime.
The Martini Club is composed of Maggie, Declan, Ingrid, Ben and Lloyd, a retired quintet from the secret world of clandestine operations and strategies known as the Agency. Ingrid's husband, Lloyd, however, was an analyst and not an operative, a distinction that is important in this novel.
In this novel the friends attend a conference on Global Affairs that is being chaired by Ingrid. During the conference a world-renowned disease expert and Russian defector dies in mysterious circumstances. The gang is drawn into the investigation because Maggie unwittingly becomes part of the investigation.
Ingrid is disturbed for other reasons when a waitress at the hotel is found dead in graphic and eerily similar circumstances to a mission that went wrong thirty years ago. The novel begins with this disastrous mission, and it is a finely written piece of memory, violence and nostalgia — the strongest scene in the novel.
A ghost from Ingrid's past appears at this time. He is her former partner and lover who survived that long ago mission with her. Lloyd is understandably concerned at the appearance of this handsome, roguish man from Ingrid's past, and this tension is carried through the novel.
Ingrid joins her former partner against her better judgement, and travels to Europe to pursue the killer who eluded them thirty years ago.
Ingrid's decision has a devastating impact on her husband Lloyd. Married for many years, Lloyd is heartbroken by Ingrid's disappearance and decision to exclude him. He and Maggie and the rest of their friends undertake their own investigation to find the killer. Maggie and Lloyd make a good team: one a seasoned operative and the other a talented analyst.
They follow a series of clever clues that leads them to Amsterdam, Spain and back to Purity, Maine. Although retired, Lloyd is quite savvy with new technologies.
These parallel investigations are filled with tension and surprises as their enemies come into focus. As the two strands unite, the mystery behind the killings in Ingrid's past and present worlds is explained with dire consequences.
Gerritsen is a very accomplished and dependable writer and this ensemble of geriatric spooks is likeable and competent. There are many ghosts leftover from the Cold War, and the people who fought this war of shadows, sleights and feints carry the scars and memories. Ingrid is motivated by thoughts of the woman she couldn't protect, and Lloyd is determined to save the love of his life.
There are enough turns and twists in the narrative to keep the reader engaged, and the ending is a surprise. The Russians are involved, but this is more a story about old allegiances and loves.
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