Former spy Maggie Bird has retired to the town of Purity, Maine where she spends her days tending to her chickens and visiting with her neighbors. When a body is found in her driveway, Maggie knows that her past has come to find her. She turns to her friends, retirees from the CIA also living in Purity, to help figure out who is trying to kill her.
This is a great spy thriller. I really enjoyed the cast of characters, from the retired spies to the town police chief to the prickly neighbor and his granddaughter. The author did a fabulous job of making the characters come alive. The setting of Purity worked nicely as well. It had that small-town feel and sense of isolation that you could imagine someone who has things to hide would fit in well there.
The story moves back and forth in time as Maggie relates the story of her last assignment and what caused her to leave the CIA. It is this last assignment that she thinks the people after her are connected to. The plot was intriguing and I thought the pacing was good. I'm not sure what I liked more - the scenes in the past or the scenes in the present. The scenes in the past were more "spy-related" but I really love the idea of spies in their 60s, solving crimes while meeting up for book club. I also really liked the character of Jo Thibodeau, Purity's acting police chief, and I hope she shows up in future books.
I loved this idea of a bunch of former spies all retiring to live in the same little town. A note from the author at the end of the book indicates the idea for the story came from a real-life town in Maine that is full of retired CIA agents.
This book is the first book in a series called The Martini Club. The Martine Club is what Maggie and her friends named themselves to account for all the time they spend together when confronted by Jo, who has her suspicions about the "book club". This book is a fabulous start to a series and I can't wait to see what happens next!
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