In Books, Maine Is A Dangerous Place

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Maine Is A Dangerous Place- In Books

After reading two mystery series set in Maine, I’m beginning think that Maine is not quite the bucolic, serene place we have all been led to believe. (Although I guess the fact that Angela Lansbury’s TV series “Murder, She Wrote” was set in Maine should have been a hint.)

Tess Gerritsen’s 'The Martini Club' series is set in the small coastal town of Purity, Maine. In the first novel in the series The Spy Coast, Maggie Bird is a retired CIA agent who has moved to the quiet town of Purity to raise chickens. 

All is well until a dead body is dropped on Maggie Bird’s driveway, and it is up to Maggie and her friends (who are also retired CIA operatives) to find out who the body is and how it is related to Maggie’s former career.

The acting police chief of Purity, Jo Thibodeau, is used to dealing with crimes like DUI, expired driver’s licenses, and teenage mischief. She is suspicious of who these retirees actually are.

The characters in this novel are so interesting and the Martini Club is an apt name for the group- they drink a lot of martinis as they put their minds together to solve the murder. There are some humorous lines, and the novel is action-packed enough to keep the pace moving.

The second novel in the series, The Summer Guests, revolves around the disappearance of a teenage girl visiting Purity with her family. The host family is one of the wealthy summer residents of the area, and they believe that Maggie’s neighbor is responsible for the girl’s disappearance.

The discovery of another body from years ago in the pond near the residence complicates the investigation, and Maggie and the Martini Club are on the job again to clear her neighbor’s name and find out who is behind the dead body in the pond. This is another solid entry in 'The Martini Club' series, filled with red herrings as to the true culprit.

The third book in the series is the recently published The Shadow Friends. In this novel, Maggie’s fellow Martini Club member and retired spy Ingrid is hosting a global affairs conference when a Russian disease expert (and defector) is discovered dead in his hotel room at the conference.

When Ingrid disappears following the discovery of the body of a dead waitress from the hotel in the trunk of a car, Maggie, the rest of the Martini Club, and Chief Jo Thibodeau, along with other federal agencies, are looking for answers- and Ingrid.

This novel takes the readers out of Purity for a bit as we follow Ingrid and learn more of her back story. This one has a lot of action in it, and I like how Jo has become almost a member of the Martini Club. I highly recommend all three books in the series. 

Ron Currie’s novel The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne gives away the ending of his story but how he gets there is fascinating. Babs Dionne may look like a sweet grandmother but she also runs the drug trade in Waterville, Maine, a town filled with Americans of French Canadian descent.

With her group of loyal friends and daughter, Babs has control over all of Waterville, including having the chief of police in her pocket. When her younger daughter disappears, and another drug kingpin sets his sights on Babs, things become dangerous.

Babs will stop at nothing to find out who killed her daughter, and to hold onto control of the impoverished town she grew up in. The novel has been compared to Elmore Leonard (by Stephen King) and The Godfather and I read it in one sitting. It is incredible.

Currie tells Babs' origin story in his newest novel, We Will See You Bleed. In this one we see what led Babs to her life as a drug trafficker, beginning with a brutal rape at the age of fourteen by a police officer. 

Babs and everyone in the town works at the paper mill that has been the lifeblood of Waterville for decades. When the company wants to get rid of the union workers, union head Babs organizes a strike that has lifelong repercussions for everyone in the town, and leads Babs to a life of crime. I liked the perspective of a town that has depended on one industry forever and the insular French-Candian community.

Both of these novels are just brilliant, I give them my highest recommendation, and this is coming from someone who is not a big crime novel reader.

The Martini Club series by Tess Gerritsen- A

Published by Thomas & Mercer

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie- A+

Published by Putnam

Trade paperback, $20, 378 pages

We Will See You Bleed by Ron Currie-A+

Published by Putnam

Hardcover, $30, 370 pages

Friday 5ive- October 27, 2023

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Like the fact that as I write this, it is 75 degrees in NYC. It was a busy week, we were out everywhere.

1) The ArchCare Gala was held this week and they raised over $2 million to care for the frail and vulnerable in the archdiocese of New York. It was a fantastic evening, with Good Day New York's Rosanna Scotto once again emceeing, and she had a terrific interview with New York Giants legend Eli Manning. Everyone was excited to meet and get a photo with Eli (who is very tall). Nick Fradiani, who now plays Neil Diamond  in Broadway's A Beautiful Noise- The Neil Diamond Musical, performed four songs-America, I'm A Believer,  I Am I Said, and of course Sweet Caroline. We saw Nick in A Beautiful Noise earlier this year and he is phenomenal in the show. If you get the chance to come to NYC, definitely go see it. 

Our team with Eli Manning

Nick Fradiani, my husband Scott and myself

You can see some of Rosanna's interview with Eli Manning here.

You can see some of Nick's performance here.

2) We had dinner with two friends this week at Sartiano's in the Mercer Hotel in New York and it was quite an experience. Apparently it is the hot spot, drawing lots of celebrities. It's a gorgeous restaurant, and the food was amazing. I had the Agnolotti, made with sweet corn, chanterelles, and pecorino cheese. It was the best pasta I've had outside of Italy. It's a special treat dinner, and I highly recommend it. 

Photo from Sartiano's website

3) After dinner we attended a talk at the Sheen Center featuring television producer Matt Williams reading from his memoir Glimpses- A Comedy Writer's Take on Life, Love and All That Spiritual Stuff. Williams, who co-created and produced Roseanne and Home Improvement, two of the biggest sitcoms of the 1990s, also teaches at Columbia University, so he knows how to speak to an audience and keep us engaged. Author Adriana Trigiani came onstage after the reading to discuss Williams' book and career, and I found the talk so interesting. Williams' book talks about how throughout his life he has found glimpses of grace and goodness when he needed it most. In the scary world we find ourselves in, glimpses of grace and goodness are so important. I'm looking forward to reading Glimpses.  

4) It was a week of bookish lunches. The first was with a new friend, Alexa Weijko, an editor at 

Soho Press. I've seen Alexa on Zoom presentations with publishers speaking about their upcoming books, so I was excited to meet in person this week. We talked books we like, my work at the Book Cellar, and I learned all about the job an editor does (which I found fascinating). We're also from the same hometown of Auburn, New York, so we caught up on all things Auburn. I can't wait to hunker down with these terrific upcoming Soho Crime books, they're always intriguing reads.

My second bookish lunch was catching up with two of my Book Cellar friends. We talked books we've recently read and loved and books we're looking forward to reading, as well as new restaurants and shops in the neighborhood. I even stopped into the recently opened Caroline's Donuts and picked up a few treats for me and one doggie treat for my son's dog Otto. Mmmm, donuts as Homer Simpson would say.

5) I read two good books this week. The first is Jean Kwok's The Leftover Woman, the story of two women whose very different lives intersect in ways they couldn't imagine. Jasmine secretly leaves her home in China for New York City to look for the daughter she was told by husband had died at birth. Rebecca works in publishing and lives in a beautiful New York City home with her handsome and charismatic husband and young daughter they adopted from China. Jasmine deals with the challenges of being an impoverished immigrant while trying to find her daughter, while Rebecca's carefully manicured life is becoming unglued with problems in her marriage and her career in her father's legacy publishing house crumbling. Kwok masterfully manages to keep the story suspenseful while at the same time throwing a light on the intensely competitive publishing world, the invisibility of immigrants, and the repercussions of the one child policy in China. It's just brilliant. 

The second book is Tess Gerritsen's thriller The Spy Coast. Maggie Bird, a retired CIA spy moves to a quiet coastal town in Maine where some of her former colleagues have already quietly settled incognito. When someone from Maggie's past comes looking for her, the team, who calls themselves The Martini Club, band together to find out who is after Maggie. They also have to deal with Jo, the new chief of police of this quiet town, who wonders what is the deal with this so-called Martini Club of older people who keep insinuating themselves in her investigation. It's a fast-paced story with terrific characters and I'm happy to see that this is billed as the first in the Martini Club series, I will be impatiently waiting for the next book in the series. Gerritsen got the idea for the book from the fact that she discovered the little town she lives in in Maine has a group of retired CIA agents living there. 

Stay safe and healthy all. Until next time.