Not long after bestselling author Tess Gerritsen moved to Maine in 1990, she began to hear the stories — initially from her husband, a physician in their new home of Camden.
“He’d always do an occupational history with his patients, and he’d ask them what they did for work. They’d say, ‘I worked for the government.’ He’d ask, ‘Well, what did you do?’” Gerritsen recalled. “They’d say, ‘I can’t talk about it.’”
Gerritsen soon began to discover that, for some reason, there was a community of former intelligence operatives who worked for the CIA living the retirement life in idyllic, seaside Camden, lured there by its beauty and pace of life — and a reputation for discretion among the residents. You mind your business, and I’ll mind mine.
“I remember one time I was joking with my son’s friend’s parents about something, and laughed and said something akin to, ‘You guys must be CIA,’” Gerritsen. “There was this big pause. And then, ‘Where did you hear about that?’”
The idea that behind the polite, well-to-do facade of sleepy Camden there are a bunch of retired spies who know how to shoot guns, tap phones and generally kick ass inspired Gerritsen to write her latest book, “The Spy Coast.” It’s the first in what Gerritsen intends to be a series of novels about the “Martini Club” — a group of former spies in the fictional Maine town of Purity who get together over martinis to reminisce about the good old days.
At the book’s core is the character of Maggie Bird, a woman in her 60s with a complicated past in the intelligence community, who moves to Purity to heal from the trauma of a mission gone terribly wrong. She gets drawn back into that world, however, when a dead body shows up in her driveway.
She recruits the members of the Martini Club to help solve the case — and ends up in an unlikely partnership with local police chief Jo Thibodeau, a no-nonsense Mainer who wants to protect her community. As with her iconic characters Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, Bird and Thibodeau are two charismatic and complimentary figures.
“When I write, I tend to hear the voices of the characters. I let them tell me where things are going and who they are,” Gerritsen said. “I heard Maggie loud and clear. She’s mysterious. She’s sad. She’s full of regret. And I think she contrasts with Jo, who is so rock solid and who knows and loves her community so much.”
In addition to wanting to write a cracking good spy novel and murder mystery, Gerritsen said “The Spy Coast” also turned out to be an exploration of the age-old conflict between local Mainers and “people from away.”
“That’s always been a point of tension in a lot of communities in Maine, and I think that really adds to the whole story,” Gerritsen said.
Although in the case of both fictional Purity and real-life Camden, there’s always more than meets the eye.
“People seem unassuming. They tend their gardens. They go to the post office. They go grocery shopping,” she said. “But who knows what sorts of special skills they might have? Who knows if someone might be a deadly shot, or what they’ve done in their past. Now that’s a great story.”
“The Spy Coast” will be available on Nov. 1, wherever books are sold. Gerritsen will appear at Left Bank Books in Belfast at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 2; at Books-a-Million in Bangor at 5 p.m. Nov. 4; and at Bookstacks in Bucksport at 5 p.m., Dec. 19.
