#Review - The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen #Espionage #Thriller

Series: The Martini Club # 3
Format: 307 pages, Hardcover

Release Date: August 25, 2026
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: Publisher
Genre: Espionage, Thriller

When a renowned disease expert and Russian defector dies mysteriously during a global affairs conference in Purity, Maine, the tight-knit band of former spies in the Martini Club once again sees their quiet coastal retirement interrupted by international intrigue. And when a waitress at the conference hotel is found murdered, Ingrid Slocum sees chilling links to a disastrous mission that nearly killed her three decades ago.

Desperate to uncover the truth, Ingrid’s drawn back into the game by a magnetic ex-CIA colleague—and former lover—who was with her on the long-ago doomed mission. He convinces her to join him, and together they head to Amsterdam to track down her would-be killer.

Ingrid’s frantic husband Lloyd and Maggie Bird are close behind, but a clandestine network of assassins is intent on stopping them. Forced to question every allegiance, the Martini Club must rely on the skills they tried to leave behind. Because in this game of revenge and deception, the past never dies—it just hides in the shadows.

The Shadow Friends is the Third installment in author Tess Gerritsen's The Martini Club series. The Martini Club consists of former Agency operatives (Maggie Bird, Declan Rose, Ben Diamond, Ingrid Slocum, and analyst husband Lloyd) who have settled in the quiet coastal Maine town of Purity for martinis, friendship, and a quieter life. That quiet rarely lasts. Recently, Purity Police Chief Jo Thibodeau learned about the Club's operations and has become the bulwark against other agencies looking too closely at the club members. 

The novel opens nearly three decades earlier in a Provence safe house, where young operative Ingrid is protecting a young woman who has turned against a Russian organized-crime syndicate. The mission collapses in violence: the protectee is killed, a colleague is executed with a signature stiletto through the eye, and one attacker may have escaped. The present-day story returns to Purity, where Ingrid is organizing a local global-affairs/disease-control conference at a resort. The keynote speaker, a Russian defector and bioweapons/disease expert (Dr. Mikhail Maslov), falls ill and dies of poisoning. 

Almost simultaneously, a young waitress is found murdered in a car trunk with the same distinctive stiletto wound. The killing method immediately links the present crimes to Ingrid’s old failure. Her former colleague and lover, Rodrigo Estrada (now running a private intelligence firm called Argus), reappears and draws her back into the field. When Ingrid vanishes, her husband Lloyd and Maggie follow the trail to Amsterdam and beyond, while the rest of the Club and local police chief Jo Thibodeau work the Maine end of the case. 

The story expands into questions of lingering Cold War-style networks, personal loyalties, and whether the past can ever truly be outrun. The dual timeline is used effectively: the opening Provence sequence is widely noted as one of the book’s strongest set pieces, establishing stakes and character history without feeling like mere backstory. The shift into international territory gives the series more scale and menace than the more localized earlier books, while still retaining the charm of the aging-but-still-competent protagonists. 

The international plot, while more ambitious, occasionally leans on familiar Russian-assassin tropes. Ingrid is the clear focus, and the reappearance of her old flame creates both romantic and professional tension that is handled with adult restraint rather than soap-opera excess. Lloyd’s role as the non-field analyst forced into active pursuit adds texture, and the group dynamic among the Martini Club members remains one of the series’ pleasures. Jo Thibodeau continues to serve as a useful grounded counterpoint—the local law enforcement figure who knows the retirees are not ordinary citizens but still has to navigate official channels.

The Shadow Friends succeeds because it takes the premise of the Martini Club—competent, scarred people who thought they were done with the game—and forces them to confront how unfinished that game still is. It balances friendship, competence, and genuine danger without turning the characters into superheroes or the plot into pure nostalgia. Recommended for fans of spy fiction featuring older protagonists, dual timelines, and the uneasy intersection of personal history and professional duty.

Note: While putting together this review, I discovered a fourth novel in this series, The Italian Thriller (2028). I will definitely look forward to seeing what happens next to this crew. 

 

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