Joining us today is bestselling author Tess Gerritsen, whose highly-anticipated sequel to The Spy Coast is out now. In The Summer Guests, a young girl goes missing, and it’s up to a group of retired CIA operatives to investigate.
I found The Summer Guests properly mysterious and a little eerie, but with enough levity to make it easy to read and enjoy. For those reasons, plus Tess’s skilled storytelling, I think you will enjoy it, too.
Connect with Tess on Bluesky, Facebook, and her website. Grab a copy of The Summer Guests here.
Hi, Tess! Thanks so much for joining. The Summer Guests is the second installment in your Martini Club series, which follows a group of ex-CIA operatives investigating a missing teen in the seaside village of Purity, Maine. How did you come up with the characters of retired spy Maggie Bird and her friends? What is challenging—or exciting—about crafting a mystery with multiple investigators, as opposed to just one?
When I wrote The Spy Coast, I was inspired by the real-life detail that quite a few retired spies live in my small town in Maine. I wondered what their lives are like in retirement, and what secrets they could tell. I’d look at gray-haired people in the grocery store or post office, and try to imagine what their lives were like when they were younger. And that’s what launched the first book, in which I explore the past life of one spy in particular, Maggie Bird. When a dead spy turns up in her driveway, Maggie recognizes it as a threat from her past. To deal with it, she turns to old friends in town who have similar skills. That’s how my characters Ben, Declan, Ingrid, and Lloyd were created.
In many ways, they created themselves, which is how characters usually come to me. They start speaking in my head, revealing their personalities, and they bloom on the page. They’re all sharp and capable, but with their quirks. Ben is a bit of a thug. Declan is the diplomat. Ingrid is the brainy one. Lloyd is the lovable analyst. One of the major themes in this series is what it’s like to grow older, to feel ignored and overlooked while you’re still fully capable of handling a crisis. These characters have gray hair and wrinkles, but they’re still ready for adventure, and they represent for me the possibilities of what life still holds in store as we grow older.
Mysteries with retiree sleuths are having a moment—what do you love about an older protagonist? How do you use the age and experience of Maggie and her friends in the context of a thriller?
I didn’t think about that particular trend when I wrote this. It was much more of a personal book for me, because I’m growing older, and I live in a town where a lot of retirees live. I look around and see incredibly brilliant and well-accomplished neighbors, and those are the characters I wanted to write about, people who might be overlooked just because they’re older, in a world where wisdom and experience are shrugged off as unimportant. Current events provide a painful example. Young tech-bros now seem to be in charge of our federal agencies, and these “whiz kids” are heedlessly laying off older people who have the institutional wisdom to keep those agencies functioning.
While book one in the series, The Spy Coast, has an international edge, The Summer Guests takes place entirely in the small town of Purity. How does setting influence your writing process? Do you find a more limited location easier or more challenging to write?
I chose a local setting for The Summer Guests after I learned that a small branch of the CIA’s MKULTRA program was active here in Maine back in the 50’s–70’s. For those who are unfamiliar with MKULTRA, the program involved the testing of experimental psychoactive drugs such as LSD and it led to the tragic death of at least one person. (We may never know if there were other deaths.)
Setting the story in a small Maine town allowed me to explore the background of my non-CIA character, police chief Jo Thibodeau, who has an uneasy relationship with the local spies. And it also brings to the forefront the very real conflicts in Maine between the locals and people “from away.”
You have enjoyed a long career, with over twenty published novels and film and TV projects (like TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles, based on your popular series of the same name). What have you learned over your career? Can you offer any tips or wisdom for budding writers and aspiring authors?
Write what moves you emotionally, and concentrate on the emotional arc your characters take, rather than spending all your time on the mechanics of the plot. When I write a crime scene, I’m not focused on the blood and guts or violence, but on what my sleuths are feeling. Likewise, when I wrote about spies in The Spy Coast, I didn’t focus on the gunplay or the derring-do, but on the emotional impact of living in the world of espionage—the paranoia of not knowing who your friends are, the stress of never being able to tell the truth.
When I was planning the third in the Martini Club series, and I was asked “what is your book about?” I didn’t say it was about an aging assassin or an old vow of revenge; instead, I said it was about the emotional journey that my character Ingrid goes on when her old lover walks back into her life—and her marriage comes under threat. The word I’d use to describe that book is “longing,” for things that could have been.
Lastly, what are you currently working on? Do you have more Martini Club thrillers in the works, and/or anything else you’re excited to share?
I’m writing the third book in the Martini Club series, titled The Shadow Friends. When one of the speakers at the local global security conference is poisoned with Polonium, my circle of spies is thrust into the center of the investigation. Complicating matters is the reappearance of Ingrid’s former lover (and fellow spy), who is convinced the killer is the same assassin they encountered in a previous operation. Their hunt for the killer sends Ingrid on an international mission, with her worried husband Lloyd in pursuit.
Thanks so much to Tess for the interview. Sleuths, I hope you enjoyed it! If you aren’t already subscribed, please be sure to sign up for the Cluesletter and get author features like this alongside other mystery goodies, delivered to your inbox every other Tuesday.