The excellent second novel in the Martini Club series

When former spy Maggie Bird retired to the seaside hamlet of Purity, Maine, she settled in for a quiet life with breathtaking views. But enemies from her past soon threatened to destroy everything.

Maggie survived, thanks to her wits and the collective intelligence of the Martini Club, the circle of ex-CIA friends in her cocktail-sipping book club. Their handiwork, however, caught the attention of young police chief Jo Thibodeau. Now Jo and her neighborhood ex-spies have an uneasy alliance.

After a teenager vanishes ― and Maggie’s neighbor becomes the prime suspect ― she joins the investigation, determined to prove her friend’s innocence. But the girl’s wealthy family pushes for an arrest. And when authorities discover a long-dead corpse in a nearby pond, the case becomes doubly complicated, with unthinkable ties to long-buried secrets.

As Jo grapples with two unexplained mysteries, the Martini Club races to uncover the truth behind shadowy secrets… before more lives are lost.

The Spy Coast, Gerritsen’s first novel featuring the Martini Club, was the first of the author’s novels that I read and it quickly hooked me, and ever since finishing it I’ve been eagerly anticipating the sequel. While it isn’t published until March 2025, I was lucky to receive a DRC of The Summer Guests, which I started right away, and blitzed through — I’m very happy to report that it’s an excellent continuation of the series!

Every summer, the population of Purity, Maine, grows as city folk descend on their summer homes in the idyllic countryside. As is true of so many communities such as this, there is a tension between the full-time residents and seasonal residents — the former, after all, effectively serve the latter during the summers and as caretakers during the rest of the year. This summer, a member of a wealthy family with long ties to Purity has gone missing under strange circumstances, and the tensions within the community start to rise. Past mysteries also bubble to the surface, and Gerritsen does a fantastic job painting a portrait of the two “sides” of the Purity population, and how they have developed over time.

Retired spook Maggie and her fellow CIA retirees (the Martini Club) find themselves invested in the case. This is mainly because they’re constitutionally incapable of not meddling and investigating mysteries; but also because they’re very good at solving them. Acting-Chief of Purity PD Jo Thibodeau has developed a tentative working relationship with the Martini Club — she’s intent on keeping them out of the way (they are, after all, meddling in law enforcement matters), while simultaneously very aware of just how competent they are, and what a valuable asset they can be. It’s an uneasy, though ultimately positive, relationship. It is also a source of some levity in an otherwise serious story, as the retirees have a delightful playfulness and disregard for officialdom.

In addition to the mystery at the heart of the plot, The Summer Guests is also about getting older. It was very interesting (and often endearing), watching the Martini Club grapple with new challenges that have arisen since they retired from their espionage-based careers. Each of the characters, young and older, are three dimensional and engaging — even peripheral characters are well-drawn and realistic. Gerritsen expertly weaves the characters’ stories into the mystery at the centre of the plot, neither distracting from the other, building to a very satisfying read.

I really hope there are more novels in this series on the way. I’m just sad I’ll have a long wait until the next one… In a time when espionage fiction is having something of a renaissance, Gerritsen’s new series fits in rather nicely; while simultaneously taking a slightly and refreshing different approach to it.  If you’re a fan of the crime/mystery genre, then I think you’ll find plenty to like in The Summer Guests and, if you haven’t read it yet, The Spy Coast — both of which are very highly recommended.

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Tess Gerritsen’s The Summer Guests is due to be published by Thomas & Mercer in North America (March 18th, 2025) and Penguin in the UK (March 27th).

Also on CR: Review of The Spy Coast

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Review copy received via NetGalley