The Spy Coast

Written by Tess Gerritsen & Reviewed by Noreen in the Cell

Whenever I’m introduced to a new author, I try to read their book with no poison in the well whatsoever.  I want to know nothing besides what’s breathing within the crucible of the story.  And then inevitably, I wiki the author afterward because I’m furious with myself for never having heard of someone so talented or I rage-wiki because I’m furious that this no talent hack of an author got paid in the first place and they conspired, along with the publisher, to rob me out of whatever cash I spent reading the wretched thing.  But never did I expect to learn that the author of The Spy Coast also wrote freaking Rizzoli & Isles???

Anyway, this is The Spy Coast, The Martini Club Book 1.

Right out of the gate, the Carnival can tell this will fall under the “one last job” trope instead of the “first day on the job” trope (think Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, not Ethan Hawke in Training Day).  Older retired spies who executed Operation Cyrano in Malti are being targeted, and both the audience and the protagonist is left to figure out why.

Early on we only meet with Diana, an agent who killed two assailants in Paris before going dark, and later Maggie, a former spy living in Maine as a chicken farmer before being contacted by someone who knows about Diana’s disappearance but also hopes that Maggie can help in locating her, despite it being decades after the events in Paris.

So far it feels like The Expendables but with lady spies, which is obviously a considerable upgrade from the Prime Timeline Expendables franchise we are currently, ahem, blessed with.

Maggie’s ensuing chapters are from the 1st person POV, so let’s crown her as our protagonist for now.  However, chapter three starts with Jo.  Jo has major Fargo cop vibes and she’s very likable in that likable aww shucks kind of way.  Let’s assign her a folksy accent in our collective heads.  Without knowing anything about the author, the impression from the cursory introduction to these three characters is that it feels like Jo is how she thinks the world sees her and Maggie is how she sees the world.  Always seek the oversimplified truth in fiction, and since I knew I would enjoy this book after the first twenty or so pages, I started peeking online about the author a little earlier than I normally do.  I was curious if the author was homeschooled or orphaned like Callie, the young neighbor to protagonist Maggie in the book. Turns out she went to Stanford and is an MD who retired to write fiction (and Rizzoli & Isles). I could not have been more off in my brilliant assessment.  And yet I will continue to make similar incorrect assumptions in the future. 

Still top shelf story telling at 85 pages in.  The inciting incident appears to be a woman named Bianca, first contacting Maggie regarding the missing Diana before turning up dead in Maggie’s driveway.  And Maggie can’t tell if this is a warning to her specifically because the body was dropped on her property or if it’s a peace offering, as in ‘this girl asked around about you and now she’s dead, you’re welcome.’  My cat used to do something similar with the moles on our property.

The story in act two shifts to a former relationship between Maggie and Daniel, some guy that is apparently dead and may have had Russian ties.  Seventeen years ago, there was a honeypot mission for Maggie…but she ended up marrying him instead of exploiting him, forcing her to question her espionage acumen in hindsight while she tells her two former colleagues living in Purity, Maine about her history with Daniel, which likely prompted this visit from whoever killed Bianca and is stalking her now.

Jo, the small town cop, knows that something is up and Maggie isn’t being totally forthright with her after investigating the crime scene.  So, a decent potential for mild sense of conflict there.  Unfortunately, this angle never gets explored.

The two friends in Purity listening to her history seem a bit contrived and ultimately just need to be there for the author to deliver the story – it’s a narrative choice.  These two characters were ultimately as underwhelming as Jo the obligatory small town cop.

So Maggie and Diane (and this other guy Gavin) are part of operation Cyrano, meant to hunt down Sir Phillip Hardwicke, a mole in British intel like Kim Philby.  Daniel, the personal doctor to Hardwicke, accompanies him on a trip to Malta where Maggie is able to tag along so long as it’s under the guise of chauffeuring Hardwicke’s daughter.  Maggie discovers a yacht (you know, because yachts are so easy to hide) where Daniel is meeting with Hardwicke and some other suspicious fellas.  Daniel is able to deduce that Maggie is up to no good when a flash drive goes missing, resulting in him leaving her behind in Malta to go back to London with Hardwicke in his private jet as planned.  The jet blows up after takeoff….

Flash forward to the present and Maggie is suddenly in Bangkok – this was a jarring jump from the kitchen table in Purity, Maine where we last left off from the present.  The big Act Two twist: Hardwicke is still alive though not 100% confirmed.  How is this a twist by the way?  The guy we all think is dead might not be dead…but we’re not sure.  All the author has done is confirmed the existing uncertainty.  Rather disappointing, but this leaves the door open for Daniel to still be alive as well.  But then why no attempted contact from him in the years since Maggie was traumatized by his presumed death?  They were legitimately married, and neither had admitted to the other at the time of the jet explosion that they were (or weren’t) spies.  Back to Jo – she’s still doing her Fargo thing in the background of this story and treading water; a symptom of the common Act Two lull or just a waste of a character?  She was utterly useless for the entire novel.  All she really did was get frustrated at her inability to keep up with the retired spies and lamented her mediocre fate, given that her ancestors were all small town low stakes sheriffs in Maine.

Maggie has tracked down Sylvia, the old mistress of Hardwicke in Lake Como but she has no idea that Hardwicke is likely still alive.  Couple this with Hardwicke’s daughter being presumed dead (cause of death: jet explosion, although why the author is trying to present it as new intel when obviously this has been the working assumption since the jet blew up and no one saw the daughter since) as well as Maggie’s homeschooled neighbor Callie being kidnapped and the ‘lead that goes nowhere’ vibe is humming along nicely and the official ‘all hope is lost’ beginning of act three is upon us. 

The story at this point is fine.  Enjoyable structure.  Time jumps are fun and much like From A Buick 8 by Stephen King, the seamless weaving of telling a story spanning years while sitting at a table with friends makes it a smooth read.  Just complex enough to make you sit forward in your chair and polish your reading glasses while that warm comforting undercurrent of linear plot brushes your body and your mind forward.

Far too many undercooked characters though.  Diane and Maggie and Jo are supposed to be this powerful triumvirate that propels the story forward, but Jo is treading water while the reader floats past her.  Diane had one chapter in the beginning and then disappeared (grabbed her nose and dunked herself) for the entire book and has now only resurfaced with 50 pages left by surprising Maggie - coincidentally right after all hope was lost with the Sylvia meet at Lake Como.  Very convenient timing.  Maggie is fine as a main character but her supposed closest friends, this crew in Purity, had no idea she was married all this time?  And that makes for a great spy but not necessarily an engrossing character.  The reader, like those fellas in Maine, don’t have an intimate enough sense of Maggie to care as much as needed.  The author keeps the narrative distance at arm’s length for every character in this book, and that’s somehow in spite of a first person POV Maggie. Why?

Diane was given that aforementioned thumb drive by Maggie during Operation Cyrano and she ended up only using it to gain Hardwicke’s passwords…so it was her that’s been draining his accounts over the years, giving the impression that he was still alive.  And she could only do that after he was dead and unable to monitor his own expenses, so it was actually her that orchestrated his death via the jet explosion that also killed Maggie’s husband Daniel – hence their hatred.  This little catfight didn’t sit well with me.  It’s made clear that Maggie hates Diane since Operation Cyrano.  And we now know this is ostensibly because she orchestrated the explosion.  So doesn’t that remove the mystery of Diane’s disappearance then?  Maggie, our first person narrator for much of the book, just forgot to mention to her friends at the kitchen table (or to her readers) that she no longer speaks to her work friend because she MURDERED HER HUSBAND?  This is not an unreliable narrator, this is just cheap writing. 

So Diane is the antagonist now, and not Hardwicke.  Oh wait, Bella shows up…the daughter of Hardwicke who we were told was dead.  She reveals herself as the real villain (we’ve switched antagonist like three times in the last 50 pages) and wants Diane and Gavin and Maggie dead out of vengeance.  She killed Gavin, she just killed Diane and hesitates with Maggie.  She also arranges for the freedom of homeschooled Callie for no reason whatsoever.

We close with a POV chapter from…Bella?  How utterly unnecessary.  You brought her back from the dead.  That doesn’t make her sympathetic if she’s simply replaced her father as the villain.  Real fumbling of this character in my opinion, especially from an author with so much experience.  Wearing a hat on a hat…

Then Jo has no closure either.  She just shows up and continues getting no respect and is tired and ultimately ineffective.  There was literally no reason for her the entire book.  Not one beat in the story changes without her.  Plus, her refusal to enforce any laws along the way was pretty lame.  No really, it’s fine to overtly stonewall cops when they’re investigating small town murders.  Totally plausible. 

Maggie needs time to work on herself and feels ignored by the younger generation that’s only looking to the future even though she has a healthy relationship with Callie the young neighbor.  Internal conflict failures across the board in this book.  Loved Act 1, great start to everything, but it just got so stale and the second half is brisk and digestible but over done with twists and dead/not dead tropes etc.

The Martini Club Book series should be neither shaken nor stirred.  Whatever is left of it should be dumped down the drain.  And I’ve never seen Rizzoli & Isles.  But the author’s writing gets the Carnival’s recommendation nonetheless!