I have somehow gotten through a long life of reading without ever broaching Tess Gerritsen‘s catalogue of novels, even though my genre divisions on Goodreads show that I have read more than twice the number of mysteries than I have read books in any other genre. That’s probably more common than you’d think, if you are a mystery reader, simply because mystery writers are, as a rule, prolific, and also tend to define a character and then stick with him or her, so that if you like continuity, you will probably embrace a series of, say, 18 books featuring the same protagonist.

I decided to start with one of her recent novels, The Spy Coast, which is the “Martini Club” series, book #1. When I began it, though, I didn’t realize just how new it is—the #2 book isn’t even due out until March of next year. So after I finished it and found it good, I went looking at the rest of her backlist, and I’m not sure, even though I enjoyed this one, that I will continue with any of her others. That is because they are divided into one long series—Rizzoli and Isles—and a bunch of stand-alones categorized as medical mysteries, no doubt based on her previous life as a doctor.

Although several readers say that the TV show is quite different from the books, I will probably avoid both the series and the stand-alones, simply because I am not a fan of medical mysteries. I read some of the seminal volumes with that theme by author Robin Cook back when I was a teenager, and also followed Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series for the first 10 books or so. Although I enjoy a pandemic when it’s the kick-off for a good dystopian novel, I discovered that I don’t care for all the other medical details included in this sub-genre. I don’t like the mad scientist vibe, the experimenting, the gory details of unnecessary operations and deliberate dismemberments. I prefer the focus to be on the mystery, the whodunnit, the why and the who, not the (sometimes excruciatingly detailed) how. I don’t mind a good pathologist as one of the team, but I’m not so interested in their work that I want that to be the featured character.

This Tess Gerritsen novel has none of the medical aspects, and initially appealed to me because it’s about retired people! For the same reason that I enjoyed the movies Red and Red II, in which Bruce Willis as Frank Moses “gets the band back together” when he calls up Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren as delightfully quirky retired Black-ops agents to tie up some decades-old loose ends that are threatening all their lives, the description of the Martini Club as a bunch of elderly hyper-talented CIA agents now existing quietly in a small coastal village in Maine piqued my imagination.

Main character Maggie Bird (who could definitely also be played appealingly by Helen Mirren) is happily living in an upscale log cabin and collecting blue eggs every morning from her flock of Araucana chickens until a youthful agent, organization unknown, arrives and asks about a still-secret mission from Maggie’s past, then turns up dead in her driveway a day later. The town’s acting police chief, Jo Thibodeau, is baffled by why Maggie doesn’t seem more emotionally affected by this, and her suspicions grow when she discovers Maggie and four of her neighbors taking potluck the following evening while looking over a topographical map of the area and discussing shoe prints, tire tracks, and firepower rather than having quiet hysterics at the news of murder in their town, as she believes “normal” seniors would. But Jo won’t get much out of these close-mouthed individuals beyond a bland expression and polite agreement with whatever she says.

Gerritsen does a nice job of splitting the book between the main narrator and several temporary ones as she jumps back and forth between past and present, revisiting the events that perpetuated the current crisis. Both the complicated plot and the colorful travelogue are vivid, as are the characterizations, and I didn’t see most of the events or the resolution coming. I’ll definitely read the sequel to this one; I’m just regretful that the discovery of this author won’t lead to a long binge of her back catalogue.