The Summer Guests, by Tess Geritsen.
Summer guests: a
euphemism for the thousands of summer visitors that pour into the state of
Maine every year when the weather warms up, and acting-police-chief Jo
Thibodeau expects the usual minor dust-ups with the vacation crowds that
descend on the little town of Purity – traffic offences, offensive behaviour,
drunkenness; the usual, except on a
larger scale. Well, she’s ready for the
‘guests’ in Ms Gerritsen’s second book of the Martini Club series, but she’s
still not ready to welcome into her confidence the members of the Martini Club,
a group of retired CIA intelligence officers – with nothing better to do than
meddle with perfectly legitimate investigations and seemingly always arriving
at conclusions ( and destinations!) before she does. It does absolutely nothing for her confidence
to be upstaged – especially when a young girl, a summer guest goes missing, and
all evidence points to an elderly man who gave her a lift back to her house by
Maiden Pond. Luther Yount doesn’t seem
to have a water-tight alibi either, seemingly evasive about his
destination. Case solved, except that
the young girl is still missing.
Unfortunately for Jo, Luther is the admired and trusted
neighbour of Maggie Bird, chicken farmer and former crack CIA agent: if Jo will only bend the rules a little and
allow her to see Luther in his holding cell, she’s pretty sure she’ll find out
what really happened. Which she does,
and it’s not long before events require a search of Maiden Pond, revealing a
woman’s skeleton which has been there for a considerable time.
Suddenly, in the space of a week, Jo’s Summer Guest
schedule has been blitzed: she is forced
to rely on the doubtful services of a State Detective with whom she does not
get along, (he doesn’t believe that women can function in positions of
responsibility) and whether she likes it or not, she realises that the Martini
Club, for all their pretence at suggesting lofty titles for their ‘Book Club’ –
which seems to be an excuse to consume copious amounts of alcohol – they also
have a far-reaching recall of their former talents.
Ms Gerritsen keeps the action moving along at a
satisfyingly furious pace with plenty of plot twists and turns, and her minor
characters are, as always, beautifully drawn – and she knows her environment so
well, as she and her husband had medical practices in Maine before she became a
full-time writer: everything has the
ring of authenticity here, and The Summer Guest’s Unputdownability score is
100%. FIVE
STARS.
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