Tess Gerritsen’s new book continues Maine spy saga
Tess Gerritsen, at her home in Camden.(Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
Along with windjammers, a picturesque harbor and the National Toboggan Championships, Camden is becoming known as a haven for retired CIA agents.
At least to readers of Tess Gerritsen’s Martini Club books. The series is focused on retired spies living in small-town Maine, who find their skills and expertise still come in handy. Her third book in the series, “The Shadow Friends,” comes out Aug. 25. The characters and stories of her novels are being developed into a TV series by Amazon MGM Studios.
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Gerritsen’s senior spy saga is based on fact. She knows of at least five CIA retirees who have lived in Camden and Rockport and has heard or read about more in the area, over the years. It’s also somewhat personal for her, because the story deals with aging, about people who’ve aged out of jobs but can still do the job. At 73 and with no thought of giving up writing, Gerritsen finds the spies in her books pretty relatable, although maybe not the espionage part.
“I had to get older to write this book. I do feel that as we get older, people think we have less value to society,” said Gerritsen. “Maybe you meet somebody at the grocery store, and they’re bent over with gray hair, but you don’t realize they’ve had amazing, interesting, maybe even dangerous lives.”
Gerristen will be traveling around the country to promote the book, including several stops in Maine. On Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. she’ll be at The First Church in Belfast, with fellow Camden author Paul Doiron, for a free talk and signing organized by Left Bank Books. On Sept. 12 at 6 p.m. she’ll appear at a discussion and book signing at Books-A-Million in South Portland. Tickets are $19.97, which includes a copy of the book.
SPIES LIKE US
Gerritsen, who has lived in Camden since 1990 and regularly ends up on the New York Times bestsellers list, also wrote the long-running “Rizzoli & Isles” novel series, about a police detective and medical examiner working together. That series also came from some personal experience, since Gerritsen worked as a doctor for about five years before becoming an author. Those books were the basis of a TV series on TNT called “Rizzoli & Isles” that ran from 2010 to 2016.
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The first of her Martini Club books — named for the retired spies’ drink of choice — was “The Spy Coast” in 2023, followed by “The Summer Guests” in 2025. Though Gerritsen got the idea because former CIA agents live in her town, she sets most of the action in fictional Purity, Maine. She envisions it as being more like some of the small towns near Belfast. It also sounds like a Maine town, since the state already has several hamlets named for ideals, including Freedom, Harmony, Liberty and Unity.
“I wanted a sense of innocence,” Gerritsen said in naming the fictional town.
Author Tess Gerritsen at home in Camden. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
The Martini Club series features mostly the same characters, with Maggie Bird at the center of everything. Gerritsen said when she started to write Bird’s character, she heard a voice in her head saying “she wasn’t the woman she used to be.” That made her wanted to find out more about Maggie, including why she left the CIA and why she’s now a chicken farmer. (She left for tragic reasons.)
In “The Shadow Friends,” the focus is on former CIA operative Ingrid Slocum. The action starts when a renowned infectious disease expert and Russian defector dies mysteriously during a global affairs conference in Purity. (There’s an actual global affairs conference held in Camden every year, called the Camden Conference.)
When a waitress at the conference is murdered, Ingrid starts to see similarities with a failed mission 30 years ago, where she almost died. Ingrid is drawn back into the spy game by an old lover who also happens to be a spy. She vanishes, leaving her husband in Maine and the rest of her Martini Club friends looking for answers.
Ingrid’s in her 70s when all this happens, and Gerritsen wanted to challenge some stereotypes about seniors, romance and adventure.
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” I thought it would interesting if an old lover of Ingrid’s came back into her life and ask for help with another operation,” Gerritsen said. “Would a 70-plus-year-old woman be tempted to walk away from her marriage and go back into the field?”
FACTS FOR FICTION
As in all her books, Gerritsen has had to do research to get the facts of her Martini Club stories straight, with all the spy gadgets and methods. She had to do quite a bit of reading about polonium poisoning, for instance, which is incredibly hard to detect. She’s read CIA agent memoirs, to help mold the personalities of her characters.
And even though the characters are retired in Maine, they spent their lives working around the world, so their adventures often take them back. In the fourth Martini Club book, the story will take the characters to Italy.
About a year after the release of the first book, “The Spy Coast,” a series development deal was announced with Amazon MGM Studios. Gerritsen said that writers have been hired and the first season of the show would focus on just one of the books. But other than that, she doesn’t know when it might debut on TV.
Besides writing the Martini Club series, Gerritsen is writing more scripts for TV, including a Lifetime film about a Miami cop who has a traumatic experience and moves to Alaska. She struggles to cope with her trauma and her new environs. There’s no air date yet.
Gerritsen says she likes the change of pace of writing scripts.
“It just feels snappier. It’s all about dialogue and character. With a novel, there’s a great deal of narrative that goes into it, setting up atmosphere,” said Gerritsen. “”With a script, you can take care of the atmosphere in a paragraph. The writing moves faster.”
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Tagged: featured, Maine authors
Ray Routhier has written about pop culture, movies, TV, music and lifestyle trends for the Portland Press Herald since 1993. He is continually fascinated with stories that show the unique character of. More by Ray Routhier
