The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen

Item: The Shadow Friends
Rating: 5
Author: BaronessMom

Posted September 22, 2026 by BaronessMom in Review, Thriller and Suspense / 0 Comments

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Shadow Friends

by Tess Gerritsen

Series: The Martini Club #3
Series Rating:

Published by Thomas & Mercer on August 25, 2026
Setting: Purity, Maine
Genres: Crime Thriller
Pages: 293
Format: Audible Audiobook, Hardcover, Kindle, Paperback
Source: the Publisher
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Get Your Copy at: Amazon

From New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen comes a harrowing and emotional thriller where ghosts of the Cold War return with a vengeance—and cannot be outrun.

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 by Tess Gerritsen is brilliant.

Will the Martini Club figure out who is killing people in Purity, Maine?

The Martini Club is composed of five friends, all of whom may or may not have been former CIA agents. Either way, they have known each other for years, and they all have exceptional skill sets. This installment focuses on Ingrid’s past. Her loves and losses. We see some of the things that shaped her into the woman she is today. I like Ingrid; I like to think I would have been friends with the retired woman who works on the library board. I wouldn’t have known who she was before her retirement; that is for sure.

Four other members of the club: Lloyd, Ingrid’s husband; Maggie, the chicken farmer; Ben, the extremist; and DeClan, the steady and patient one. I’d also say Jo, the local Police Chief, is an unofficial member of the club. I know, she is a bit too young, and she doesn’t have that secretive background, but she is learning a lot from the others.

The Situation

Without spoiling anything, a piece of Ingrid’s past comes back into her life, and now she is drawn back into the life she once had. There are so many crazy things going on, like strange deaths, murder by stiletto, and a mole in a government agency that is leaking information to Moscow. Oh, and a secretive security agency is helping clean up the messes that keep happening.

This whole story was right out of the Cold War- spies, Russia, all the things that were happening when I was younger, but I believed that had stopped. Could fiction be mimicking real life? Is it possible that our country is compromised? These are all of the things happening in the story, and Ms. Gerritsen does such a wonderful job of pulling us into the folds, dark alleys, and abandoned farmhouses. I so loved the twists and turns she plotted throughout, keeping our merry group of seniors moving.

Five Stars

I give The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen five stars. I really enjoyed diving into this world of retirement and espionage with the Martini Club. It really kept me guessing. I recommend it to all the thriller readers out there.

The Martini Club

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen.

Until the next time,

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About Tess Gerritsen

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), The Bone Garden (2007), The Keepsake (2008; UK title: Keeping the Dead), Ice Cold (2010; UK title: The Killing Place), The Silent Girl (2011), Last To Die (2012), Die Again ( 2015), Playing With Fire ( 2015), I Know A Secret (2017) and The Shape Of Night (2019). Her books have been published in forty countries, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.

Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and number one bestsellers abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

She is also a filmmaker. She and her son Josh have just completed production of a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo. Their previous film, “Island Zero”, is a feature-length horror movie that was released in 2018.

Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

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