By Ande Jacobson
The second book in Tess Gerritsen’s Martini Club series, The Summer Guests, again returns to Purity, Maine. Maggie Bird, Declan Rose, Ben Diamond, and Ingrid and Lloyd Slocum are again involved in solving not just one crime, but also an old one that took place decades ago in the secluded hamlet they now call home. The five members of the Martini Club are ex-CIA operatives who were just looking for a quiet retirement, but while spies can leave active duty, they can’t turn off their zest for solving the puzzles that come their way. This time, Maggie rounds up the club when her friend and neighbor, Luther Yount, is arrested for something he didn’t do.
Setting the scene, Maiden Pond in Purity is a pond with a history. Homes surround the idyllic little touch of blue. On one side live residents who are native to the area, and their homes are very modest (or less), and occupied year-round. On the other side of the pond sits an array of summer homes for the well-to-do summer guests who invade the town every summer. Purity relies on tourist income, so the visitors are necessary, but there’s no small amount of tension between the guests and the people who truly live there. Mostly they ignore one another, but there is one family, the Conovers, who are more obnoxious than most in flaunting their opulence. The matriarch, Elizabeth Conover, has a secret past that eventually comes back to haunt her. Her two adult sons, Colin and Ethan, grew up spending their summers at Moonview, the Conover estate on the water directly across from the simple home of Reuben and Abigail Tarkin. The feud between Reuben Tarkin and the Conovers stems from long buried events and eventually explodes.
While the Tarkins represent the authentic Maine residents from Gerritsen’s perspective, the Conovers represent the opposite. There’s a lot of dysfunction within the Conover clan, although just how much slowly unfolds through the course of the story. For instance, Colin’s wife Brooke has an unusually close relationship with their teenage son Kit, ostensibly because Kit was sickly as a young child, but is there more there? Ethan, his wife Susan, and stepdaughter Zoe seem to be more normal and close knit. Their nearby neighbors Arthur Fox and Hanna Greene also have a long history with the Conovers with their own secrets to guard.
So what’s the initial mystery? The Conovers are there to scatter Elizabeth’s husband George Conover’s ashes and hold a memorial for him. It’s the first visit for Susan and Zoe, and they’re a little overwhelmed by it all. While there, Zoe goes missing one afternoon after spending time with Callie Yount, Luther’s granddaughter. Over the course of the search for her, bones are discovered in Maiden Pond. Susan insists that the bones couldn’t be Zoe’s and that she couldn’t have drowned because she is a champion swimmer. Once it’s determined that the bones are indeed not Zoe’s, whether or not they are related to her disappearance then becomes a new piece of the mystery.
The search brings in Police Chief Jo Thibodeau, a young, very able Maine native whose mission is to protect Purity and its residents. In the past, Jo and the Martini Club had been at odds, but they came to an uneasy alliance that through the course of this adventure becomes closer. Because Luther was the last one reported to have seen Zoe, and they ultimately find blood in his truck, he’s arrested for the crime. That sets Maggie and company into motion. Maggie doesn’t believe that Luther had anything to do with the crime, but she and her team have to prove it. The mystery gets even murkier once Zoe is found in critical condition in an unexpected location. Whoever kidnapped Zoe surely left her for dead. That she survived adds urgency to the situation.
Gerritsen weaves several threads and provides a fair amount of misdirection along the way, although even the misdirection is relevant to the multiple mysteries at hand. The story moves quickly for the first two-thirds of the book, then it takes off at a breakneck pace jolting readers into an adventure they won’t see coming in the final third. Through the story, Gerritsen examines the friction between the summer guests and the “real” residents of Purity. She modeled the little coastal town after her current home of Camden, Maine. For her, Camden is an endless source of inspiration that spawned the Martini Club series and its core group of ex-CIA operatives. They are technically retired (at least from the agency), but given how quickly they spring into action, they aren’t and may never truly be retired. There’s also far more to the Tarkins than first meets the eye, and readers eventually learn more of their backstory which is shocking, but not entirely unheard of.
As with so many of Gerritsen’s books, this one is character-driven. Their thoughts, emotions, and actions are relatable, and very human. Readers quickly become invested in the story and care about the characters, both new and old. For the regulars, i.e., the members of the Martini Club, Jo, Callie, and Luther, it’s like visiting old friends. For the new acquaintances, readers might make some quick decisions that get walked back over time as they learn more about them. The Conovers and Tarkins have a much more complex relationship than readers are first led to believe that goes far beyond the obvious haves vs. have nots. Gerritsen is also very aware of the friction between those who are true “Mainers” and those from away, i.e., visitors or even people who recently moved there. There’s a provincial aspect to Maine that makes people weary of strangers. It takes time for trust to build. The most striking relationship though is how the bond between the Martini Club and Jo grows stronger over time. There’s a great deal of respect there, grudging at first, but also borne of need. Jo has skills, but being a small town police chief, she has limited reach. The Martini Club still has connections they’ve spent a lifetime building that come into play. Yet even with their experience, tools, and connections, they are not infallible. They are human which is rather reassuring and even endearing.
Gerritsen initially intended the first book in the series, The Spy Coast, to be a one off, but by the final draft she found that she had become fond of the characters she’d created, and her publisher agreed. This latest installment was released in March 2025, and the third Martini Club book, titled The Shadow Friends, is due out in August 2026. It’s going to be a long year waiting for its release after reading The Summer Guests.
References:
The Summer Guests, by Tess Gerritsen
https://agoodreedreview.com/2023/12/08/book-the-spy-coast/
https://www.tessgerritsen.com/
https://www.militarypress.com/interview-with-tess-gerritsen-3/
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