The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen
In bestselling author Tess Gerritsen’s third installment of The Martini Club mysteries, The Shadow Friends (Thomas & Mercer), the members of the club — Maggie, Declan, Ben, Ingrid and Lloyd — have reached the stage of life when retirement should mean a good meal, good booze and early to bed. After years as CIA “spooks,” they thought they had found that simpler life in Purity, a quiet coastal Maine town where they could spend their days sipping martinis. But murder and danger always seem to find them.
The Past Comes Calling
This time it’s Ingrid Slocum, a former field operative, who is the star of story. When she volunteers to manage a local global affairs conference focusing on the prevention of the next worldwide pandemic, Ingrid gets more than she bargained for. Her guest speaker, Dr. Mikhail Maslov, a renowned disease expert and Russian defector, mysteriously falls ill in his hotel room at the resort. Maggie discovers him collapsed on the floor of his room and rushes to give him CPR, unaware he has been exposed to Ebola on a recent trip to Africa. Maggie and Maslov are hospitalized in isolation pending testing, but when Maslov dies, all hell breaks loose as the Martini Club must find out what — or who — killed him.
Then, after Ingrid discovers that a waitress at the hotel has been murdered, she recognizes a connection between the brutal manner of the woman’s death and an incident that nearly killed her three decades ago. Coincidentally, her handsome former colleague and once-lover, Rodrigo Estrada, is attending the conference, and he, too, sees the execution as similar to their disastrous mission. He’s joined the private security sector and now owns a firm that operates in the shadows to solve international crises. Rodrigo uses his sex appeal and Ingrid’s commitment to the cause to pressure her into joining him, when an anonymous client hires him to uncover the truth behind Maslov’s and the waitress’ deaths.
Ingrid re-enters the game, leaves Purity without explanation, embarking upon a mission fraught with peril for herself and loved ones. Is she being seduced by her former lover, or is she truly focused on righting a past wrong?
Maggie and Lloyd follow suit, coming face-to-face with a network of assassins on Ingrid’s trail, who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Back home, Declan and Ben hunt down the cause of Maslov’s death, which also leads to terrifying international repercussions evoking shades of the Cold War.
Never Too Old to Solve a Murder
Gerritsen does it again: luring The Martini Club into high-stakes global espionage and dragging readers along for a wild, thrilling ride around the world. It is non-stop action for the septuagenarian quintet, and although their muscles ache and their bones crack, their minds and skills remain as sharp as the knives they used on assignment so many years ago.
Gerristen’s The Martini Club novels are always fun, but in The Shadow Friends, she explores the challenges faced by retirees feeling adrift in the world, a theme that resonates with many of her readers. She examines complicated questions about the nature of retirement and society’s perception of the elderly. Do we lose our usefulness because we don’t collect a paycheck anymore? How can we continue to contribute to society? If we had the chance, would we go back to our old lives, and what would persuade us to do so?
Like the rest of us, Maggie, Ingrid, Lloyd, Ben and Declan understand the difficulty in leaving old habits behind, especially when they were filled with intrigue and danger. Their CIA training still runs hot in their blood, and it is impossible to squelch, even in Purity, Maine. And they don’t even try. Just ask Sheriff Jo Thibodeau and she will give you an earful.
In The Shadow Friends, Gerristen proves once more in this hilarious, thrilling adventure that once a “spook” always a “spook.”
International bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, she went on to earn her MD from the University of California San Francisco. While on maternity leave as a physician, she began to write fiction, publishing her first novel in 1987. She has since sold over forty million books in forty countries, winning the Nero and RITA awards. In 2024, she was named a ThrillerMaster by International Thriller Writers.
Gerritsen’s novels are major bestsellers around the world. Critics praise her books as “pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “scary and brilliant” (Toronto’s Globe and Mail), and “polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publishers Weekly dubbed her the “medical suspense queen.”
Gerritsen’s series featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series Rizzoli & Isles.
Now retired from medicine, Gerritsen lives in Maine where she writes full time.
