Review: "The Shadow Friends," Tess Gerritsen

By Liz Soares

They call themselves The Martini Club now. But they’re retired CIA.

In The Shadow Friends, they prove they still have the chops to get the job done.

Ingrid Slocum is helping coordinate a conference on global catastrophes and her husband, Lloyd, and friends Maggie Bird, Declan Rose and Ben Diamond are in the audience at the Cod Cove Resort in Purity, Maine.

When a speaker doesn’t show up for his presentation, Maggie goes up to check on him—and finds him near death. She gives him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and finds herself in medical isolation when authorities suspect the man has an infectious disease.

Meanwhile, police chief Jo Thibodeau is called in when a waitress at the resort goes missing. Turns out she’s dead, too. 

What the heck is going on?

Ingrid’s former colleague and lover, Rodrigo, shows up at the conference. He’s running a sort of private international security organization and wants her to join him on a mission. Ingrid is torn—the lure of her former exciting life is strong. When she sees that the missing waitress has been stabbed with a stiletto, she knows she must go with Rodrigo.

The stiletto is a weapon used by the Vory, Russia’s murderous crime syndicate. Ingrid and Rodrigo survived a horrible ambush by Vory members, years before in Provence.

Others did not.

Lloyd is not amused at Ingrid’s sudden disappearance. But he’s a former analyst without field training. He has the technical skills to determine that Ingrid is in Amsterdam, but he really doesn’t know what to do once he gets there. Luckily Maggie is with him, because it’s a wild ride from there to Madrid, and then back to Maine.

Whew. The pages turned!

How can a waitress from Purity be involved with the Vory? Was there a fifth perpetrator at the ambush in France, one that got away? Is a young Russian man who works at the resort somehow involved?

The friends face danger and the surprising, but determined, killer—but there is also a final, satisfying twist at the end. 

It was inspiring to see this group doing what they love best—even though Lloyd, the “desk jockey” decides that he really prefers the quiet life. Something tells me that, with his wife and friends, that’s wishful thinking.