TESS GERRITSEN
Rizzoli & Isles creator Tess Gerritsen has been gripping readers with her medical mysteries, police procedurals, and romantic thrillers since 1987, when she published Call After Midnight, written while she was a physician on maternity leave. Almost four decades, some 40 million sales, and a raft of awards, bestsellers, and TV and film adaptations later, readers can rest assured that the author PW has called “the queen of medical suspense” isn’t thinking about retirement—at least in real life.
But 60-year-old Maggie Bird, the hero of Gerritsen’s new thriller The Spy Coast (Thomas & Mercer, Oct.), is giving the quiet post-work life a go, raising chickens in small-town Maine. Since this is a Gerritsen book, and since Maggie was once a covert operative for the CIA, readers know they won’t have long to wait before the idyll ends and Maggie’s caught up in the kind of tense, twisting mystery that has long been Gerritsen’s hallmark. When murder comes right to her driveway, Maggie must face blowback from her agency past—and an assassin in the present eager to destroy the life Maggie has built. Fortunately, she has unexpected assistance in the form of the Martini Club, a vibrant cohort of ex-spies and operatives who have retired on Maine’s coast and are eager for a little action.
A series kickoff, The Spy Coast was inspired by “a quirky secret” Gerritsen discovered about her own rural Maine village, she says. “A surprising number of CIA retirees live here. Just on the short street where I lived, two different neighbors were former intelligence officers.”
That sparked an irresistible idea. “When I’d see them at the grocery store or the post office, going about their seemingly ordinary lives, I couldn’t help wondering about their past careers and the tales they could tell,” Gerritsen says.
Besides the opportunity to write about Maine, for Gerritsen one of the most enticing aspects of the Martini Club is the chance to build thrillers around a mature cast. “I hope readers look at retirees with new curiosity and appreciate that some heroes have silver hair,” she says. “And I hope it inspires us all to believe that, no matter how old we are, there are always adventures ahead for us.”
“No matter how old we
are, there are always adventures ahead for us.”
—Tess Gerritsen
Gerritsen will be in conversation with Grace Doyle, associate publisher at Amazon Publishing, on Wednesday, May 24, 3:20–3:40 p.m.