She Treads Softly: The Spy Coast

Monday, November 6, 2023

The Spy Coast

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen
11/1/23; 364 pages
Thomas & Mercer
The Martini Club #1

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen is a very highly recommended, excellent spy thriller and the first book in a new series featuring a group of retired CIA operatives living in Purity, Maine.

Maggie Bird, 60, retired from the CIA sixteen years ago and now considers herself a chicken farmer. She enjoys her quiet life on Blackberry Farm and the book club/martini club she attends with a group of long time friends who are also retired. When a mysterious woman who shows up asking about a former associate is later found dead in Maggie's driveway, it's clearly a message and threat. Maggie's friends are quick to jump in to help her with their special skills. Acting police chief, Jo Thibodeau, however, is puzzled by this group of senior citizens who are competently conducting their own investigation.

The narrative alternates between the past and the present in Maggie's life and told through the point-of-view of Maggie or Jo. Although the story moves around in time, it is very easy to follow and readers will know which character is the focus. The main story concerns Maggie and her life. Maggie is a fully realized, well-developed character and she will immediately garner your support and sympathy

Everything about The Spy Coast is excellent, the writing, plot, and characters, and represents the start of a wonderful new series that I will most definitely follow. The Martini Club is composed of likeable, skilled former CIA agents who may be retired seniors but are still intelligent and capable. The pages flew by in this entertaining, fast-paced, and engaging novel. The ending was a complete surprise.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.