Tess Gerritsen’s new book continues Maine spy saga
Bestselling Camden Author Tess Gerritsen Prepares to Release Third Installment in Spy-Thriller Series
CAMDEN — Tess Gerritsen has spent more than three decades writing from a quiet Midcoast town that draws visitors for its harbor views, windjammers and quirky winter traditions. Now, the novelist is leaning into something else that apparently flourishes in the area: retired CIA officers.
Gerritsen, 73, releases "The Shadow Friends" on Aug. 25, the third book in her Martini Club series centered on former spies who have settled in a fictional Maine village. The series has struck a chord with readers, climbed bestseller lists and caught the attention of Hollywood — Amazon MGM Studios holds a development deal to adapt the novels for television.
Gerritsen said she knows of at least five former CIA officers who have lived in Camden and neighboring Rockport over the years, and has heard of others scattered across the region. That local population of retirees with unusual résumés gave her the seed of an idea: what happens when people trained for extraordinary careers try to live ordinary lives?
"I had to get older to write this book," Gerritsen said. "I do feel that as we get older, people think we have less value to society. 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."
The Martini Club — named for the cocktail its characters favor — began with "The Spy Coast" in 2023 and continued with "The Summer Guests" in 2025. The series revolves around a rotating cast of retired operatives, with Maggie Bird, a former agent now raising chickens in Maine, serving as a central figure. Gerritsen said Bird's voice came to her with a defining line: "she wasn't the woman she used to be."
That question — what remains of a person after the career that defined them is over — anchors the series.
"The Shadow Friends" shifts focus to Ingrid Slocum, another former CIA officer in her 70s. The plot ignites when a renowned infectious disease expert and Russian defector dies under mysterious circumstances during a global affairs conference in the fictional town of Purity, a stand-in for small communities near Belfast. When a waitress at the conference is also killed, Slocum recognizes unsettling parallels to a failed mission three decades earlier that nearly killed her. Drawn back into the intelligence world by a former lover who is also a spy, she disappears, leaving her husband and Martini Club friends searching for answers.
Gerritsen said she wanted to push back against assumptions about what older protagonists — and older women in particular — can do on the page.
"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?"
Purity itself was chosen for its resonance with Maine's tradition of naming towns after ideals — Freedom, Harmony, Liberty and Unity among them.
"I wanted a sense of innocence," Gerritsen said of the fictional setting.
Real-world details have helped shape the fiction. Gerritsen has drawn on the annual Camden Conference, a global affairs gathering held in the actual town, for scenes in her books. She has read CIA memoirs to inform her characters and researched topics like polonium poisoning for plot points. The fourth Martini Club novel, currently in the works, will send the characters to Italy.
Gerritsen is no stranger to bestseller lists or screen adaptations. Before the Martini Club series, she wrote the long-running "Rizzoli & Isles" novels about a police detective and a medical examiner, drawing on her earlier career as a physician. That series became a TNT television drama that aired from 2010 to 2016.
She has lived in Camden since 1990 and shows no signs of slowing down. In addition to the Martini Club books, she is writing additional television scripts, including a Lifetime film about a Miami police officer who relocates to Alaska after a traumatic incident.
She said the shift from novels to scripts has been energizing.
"It just feels snappier," Gerritsen said. "It's all about dialogue and character. With a novel, there's a great deal of narrative that goes into it, setting up atmosphere. With a script, you can take care of the atmosphere in a paragraph. The writing moves faster."
As for the Amazon MGM Studios adaptation, Gerritsen said writers have been hired and the first season will draw from a single Martini Club novel, but she does not yet know when the show might air.
Fans will not have to wait long to see her in person. Gerritsen is touring to promote "The Shadow Friends," with several Maine stops scheduled. On Aug. 25 at 7 p.m., she will appear at The First Church in Belfast alongside Camden author Paul Doiron for a free talk and signing organized by Left Bank Books. On Sept. 12 at 6 p.m., she will hold a discussion and book signing at Books-A-Million in South Portland. Tickets for that event are $19.97 and include a copy of the book.
Whether or not Camden truly harbors a community of retired spies, the novels have given the town another claim to fame — one that seems entirely in keeping with a place known for its windjammers, its toboggan championships and its habit of attracting people with stories to tell.
