Camden author's new thriller about retired spies in Maine is out

A celebrated author whose thrillers have sold tens of millions of copies around the world has a confession for readers of her latest work: the idea struck her while doing something decidedly ordinary — wandering the aisles of a supermarket.

Tess Gerritsen, the bestselling writer behind the Rizzoli & Isles novel series that inspired the long-running television crime drama, said her most recent book grew out of a moment of mischief she never quite expected.

"I guess the overall theme is we're never too old to be tempted," Gerritsen said.

The remark, delivered with a wry smile that has become familiar to fans of her work, hints at the thread running through her latest novel. Gerritsen, whose career spans more than three decades and includes titles such as "The Surgeon," "The Apprentice," and "Ice Cold," has built a reputation for weaving tightly wound medical and criminal suspense. Her stories often unfold in hospitals and morgues, where her characters confront the darkest impulses of human nature.

But the inspiration for this latest story arrived somewhere far more mundane. It was in a grocery store, Gerritsen said, that she found herself contemplating temptation — the small, ordinary kind that can lead to extraordinary trouble.

The author, who practiced internal medicine before turning to fiction full time, has long drawn on her medical background for her plots. Her early work included a romantic suspense novel, "Call After Midnight," and a string of medical thrillers that established her as a major voice in the genre. The Rizzoli & Isles series, which began with "The Apprentice" in 1994 and continued through "The Mephisto Club," "The Keepsake," and beyond, paired detective Jane Rizzoli, a Boston homicide detective, with Dr. Maura Isles, a forensic pathologist.

The television adaptation, starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, ran for seven seasons on TNT and turned Gerritsen's characters into household names for a new generation of viewers.

While Gerritsen has not publicly released extensive details about the supermarket-inspired story, her brief comment suggests a narrative that leans into the relatable rather than the grim. The notion that "we're never too old to be tempted" speaks to a universal tension — the pull between caution and curiosity, restraint and risk — that has long powered her fiction.

For readers who have followed her from the early medical thrillers to the more recent, atmospheric suspense of novels such as "The Shape of Night" and "The Spy Coast," the new book may signal a return to more intimate psychological territory.

Gerritsen, who lives part of the year in Maine, has remained an active presence in the literary world, engaging with readers through her newsletter, social media, and frequent appearances at book festivals. She has often spoken about her writing process in candid terms, describing how the germ of a story can arrive anywhere — in a conversation overheard at a café, a headline glimpsed in passing, or, in this case, a stroll through a grocery store.

It is a reminder, she seems to suggest, that the seeds of suspense are rarely planted in dramatic settings. More often, they sprout in the most unremarkable corners of everyday life, where ordinary people — even seasoned thriller writers — find themselves considering choices they might never have imagined making.

Further details about the book's release date, setting, and plot have not yet been disclosed.