The Spy Coast (The Martini Club, 1) by Tess Gerritsen @PenguinUKBooks @PenguinBooks #20BooksOfSummer2025

The unmissable new thriller series from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Rizzoli & Isles

INTRODUCING THE ENIGMATIC MAGGIE BIRD. . .
IN A RIVETING NEW SERIES FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Book blurb

Maggie Bird is many things. A chicken farmer. A good neighbour. A seemingly average retiree living in the seaside town of Purity. She’s also a darned good rifle shot. And she never talks about her past.

But when an unidentified body is left on Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a calling card from old times. It’s been fifteen years since the failed mission that ended her career as a spy, and cost her far more than her job.

Step forward the ‘Martini Club’ – Maggie’s silver-haired book group (to anyone who asks), and a cohort of former spies behind closed doors. With the help of her old friends – and always one step ahead of the persistent local cop – Maggie might still be able to save the life she’s built.

IT’S THE PERFECT PLACE TO RETIRE . . . UNTIL THEY FIND YOU.

My thoughts

I was expecting that sort of cosy thriller regarding retired spy communities who are a little bored and under cover of a book club investigate local crime. In some ways it is that and yet it is much more. It should not have surprised me given Tess Gerritsen is such a very good writer with many amazing books to her name. I suppose the hard sell of celebrity cosy mystery novels is currently clouding the narrative of the book world and which I, momentarily, allowed it to hold me back from reading Gerritsen’s latest series. It was to be a visit to Serenity Books in Romiley to see Tess Gerritsen in person that made me reconsider. It was a wonderful evening and Tess Gerritsen is a very engaging and enjoyable conversationalist.

Still I held off purchasing the book because I already had a huge unread pile of books awaiting my attention and I was in two minds about starting another series. Somehow the event was niggling away in the back of my mind so on another trip to Romiley, I had been given a gift card for my birthday, I finally picked up The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen. Slightly annoyed that my dithering meant I would not now get a signed copy but that’s how it goes sometimes.

So to The Spy Coast it is, of course, a well written and very compelling story. Moving between the present and past it tells Maggie’s tale of why she retired 16 years ago from the CIA and what causes her to once again become entangled in her past, the world of spies and their shadowy missions.

Maggie has retired to a small coastal town called Purity drawn here when invited to visit old friends. She lives a quiet life as a chicken farmer who occasionally meets up with her friends for dinner, drinks and maybe even to discuss a book though more likely to hear the local gossip. They are all keeping a low profile in their latter years as what they have in common is a past working for the government.

It’s a visit to Maggie of a woman asking for her help to find an ex colleague, someone who Maggie had never wanted to see again, that brings about events that tell Maggie that she is in danger. She may lose everything she has found in Purity.

Later that evening the woman’s body is left on Maggie’s driveway. So begins a search by Maggie and her friends into who did this and why.

Seen as interfering by the local police chief Maggie and her friends are not to be taken lightly. They are resourceful and tenacious. They need to be in order to protect themselves and help Maggie.

The reader is taken back to Bangkok in Maggie’s memory, to London and Malta as we learn what happened in the past, get to know the characters of the book in Purity and how it all comes together as they not only try to save Maggie but also an innocent young girls life.

With wonderful characters and a terrific storyline this is a book that Tess Gerritsen’s fans will love as will those who enjoy a cracking spy thriller story. I’m looking forward to the two further books in this series.

Book: Purchased

20 Books of Summer 2025

I have read The Spy Coast as part of my 20 books of summer challenge.

My list of books being read for this challenge.

20 books of summer has new hosts Emma of Words and Peace and you can read all about it on Annabel’s blog including all the rules and sign up. It’s a challenge I’ve always enjoyed and am sure I’ll continue to do so.

The challenge takes place between 1 June and 31 August 2025

Information

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Author

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction and in 1987, her first novel, Call After Midnight, was published. It was just the first of 31 suspense novels that she’s written over a 36-year writing career. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift,” which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her novels have hit bestseller lists ever since. Among her titles are Gravity, The Surgeon, Vanish, The Bone Garden, and again with The Spy Coast. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.

She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publishers Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen” and Time Magazine named her novel The Surgeon one of the best mystery/thriller novels ever written.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles,” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

She is also a filmmaker. She and her son Josh produced a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo. It aired on PBS channels around the country. Their previous film, “Island Zero”, was a feature-length horror movie that was released in 2018.

She lives in Maine.

Tess Gerritsen Website | X (formerly Twitter)

Books

The Martini Club Series

The Spy Coast (Out now)| The Summer Guests (Out now) | The Shadow Friends (out January 2027)

The Rizzoli & Isles Series

Medical Thrillers/Suspense/Standalone

Romantic Suspense