The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen Series: The Martini Club #2
Published by Thomas & Mercer on March 18, 2025
Genres: Thriller
Pages: 328
Format: eBook
Source: Borrowed
Goodreads
Amazon, Audible, Libro.fm
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.
I was able to get The Spy Coast as a First Read from Amazon because I have Prime. It is the first book in The Martini Club series. Then I was able to continue the series with The Summer Guests through Prime Reading. I’m happy to catch up since Shadow Friends is out later this month.
Poor Jo. The Martini Club is always a bit ahead and she needs to just accept them. Of course she should verify their information but by now she can see them as a resource. I feel badly for her having to deal with the obnoxious Alfond of the state police.
There are plenty of exciting mysteries to delve into. There’s the missing teen, the bones in the lake, the longtime residents on Maiden Pond, including the Tarkins with their sad history. So much to know and some of the information is being shielded, like what happened to Dr. Greene’s “secretary’ who didn’t get to her sister’s house.
I had real worry for the missing teen. I didn’t quite have the right culprit but her mother figured it out about the same time Maggie did. Times change and values somewhat but the government rode roughshod on this small town. The pace of the information and action kept me engaged.
I really like the style and the skills and friendships of the group. Jo is fast becoming one of their own. I love how they support her.
About Tess Gerritsen
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 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.
I read all types of books but my favorites are urban fantasy and romantic suspense.I like some romance and some action / adventure / mystery in everything.I like sex in my books but please, only between TWO people.Intimate conversation is equally important to the sex in a book.It lets me see the characters.The other thing I enjoy is humor.
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