My Readers Guide for The Summer Guests will help readers and listeners get the most out of this sequel to The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen. Will I like book two in the Martini Club series? Will you? This Readers Guide for The Summer Guests contains a character list, and full plot summary with spoilers for The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen.
Jen’s Quick Take on The Summer Guests
- The Summer Guests felt very different from book one, The Spy Coast, which was filled with international intrigue and danger as a group of retired spies in Purity, Maine face some ghosts from their pasts.
- Do you need read The Spy Coast to enjoy The Summer Guests? I vote NO, but have a quick plot summary for The Spy Coast below.
- The Summer Guests leaned much more toward slow burn suspense. It had a similar vibe to Daughter of Mine by Megan Miranda: small town intrigue, a memorial service, a lake (check out my list of Lake House Suspense, and some missing persons.
- I really enjoyed watching beleaguered local police chief Jo Thibodeau as she tried to keep the “Martini Club” of spies from meddling in police business. This gives the story a cozy mystery feel.
- Yes, the Martini Club series has a Thursday Murder Club vibe as well.
- Publication date: March 18, 2025. Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy!
- Check out my full list of new March 2025 Thrillers and Mysteries
Readers Guide with a Plot Summary and Spoilers for The Summer Guest
This guide will have:
Character list for The Summer Guests (below)
Quick recap of The Spy Coast characters and plot
Plot summary and SPOILERS for The Summer Guests
The Summer Guests Ending Explained
Movie News!
Character List for The Summer Guests
The Martini Club:
- Ingrid Slocum
- Lloyd Slocum
- Ben Diamond
- Declan Rose
- Maggie Bird
The Conovers:
- George Conover: passed away three months prior
- Elizabeth Conover: wife of George
- Ethan Conover: son of George and Elizabeth and a fiction writer
- Susan Conover: wife of Ethan
- Zoe: Susan’s daughter and Ethan’s stepdaughter
- Colin Conover: son of George and Elizabeth
- Brooke Conover: wife of Colin
- Kit Conover: son of Brooke and Colin
Town Residents:
- Jo Thibodeau: police chief
- Owen Thibodeau: Jo’s father
- Luther Yount: Maggie’s neighbor
- Callie Yount: Luther’s granddaughter
- Reuben Tarkin
- Abigail Tarkin: Reuben’s sister
- Sam Tarkin: Reuben’s father
- Arthur Fox: has a house on Maiden Pond
- Farley Wade:
- Dr. Harold Greene: Hannah’s father
- Hannah Greene: has a house on Maiden Pond
- Julie Volberding: state forensic anthropologist
Other Characters
- Finn Thibodeau: Jo’s brother who works as a Maine Warden
- Dr. Wass: chief medical examiner
- Robert Alfond: state police officer
- Anna: Kit’s former nanny. She was from Mexico and Reuben had a crush on her.
Quick Recap of The Spy Coast
- In Purity, Maine, Maggie Bird is alarmed when her neighbor Luther tells her that a woman was asking for her at the post office.
- That woman, Bianca, shows up at Maggie’s farm to tell her that a woman named Diana Ward is missing and that someone tried to access files for a sixteen year-old CIA project called Operation Cyrano.
- That night, Bianca a masked man shoots Bianca and leaves her body in Maggie’s driveway.
- Diana has gone underground in Bangkok and learns that someone is coming after those involved in Operation Cyrano: Diana and Maggie. And indeed, someone tries to kill Maggie.
- Maggie and her “Martini Club” friends Declan, Ingrid, Lloyd and Ben meddle in the investigation. Finally, police chief Jo Thibodeau realizes they are all former CIA.
- The Martini Club heads to Bangkok, where Maggie learns that Diana knew that Operation Cyrano (see below) might lead to the revenge killing of Maggie’s former husband Danny in a plane crash.
- Diana believes Hardwicke is alive, and that he won’t stop until she and Maggie are dead.
- Luther’s granddaughter Callie is kidnapped in revenge.
- Maggie visits Silvia, Hardwicke’s mistress, in Italy. She’s shocked at the idea that he might be alive.
- Diana shows up in Italy and Maggie tells her that money vanished from Hardwicke’s accounts. Three masked people arrive and start shooting.
- Diana offers them $20 million to let her go. Maggie realizes that Diana stole the Hardwicke money. They shoot Dina anyway.
- One of the shooters unmasks and Maggie learns who the survivor of the plane crash is: Bella. Her mother kept her off the flight. As an adult, she found out about her father’s missing money.
- Maggie flies home, and Bella texts her Callie’s location.
What is Operation Cyrano: Summary of the Past Narrative
- Seventeen years ago, Maggie married a doctor named Danny Gallagher. Danny is a concierge medicine doctor and among his patients are Russian oligarchs and their associates.
- Diana believes that, through Danny, she and Maggie can unmask a Russian sleeper agent code-named Cyrano. Someone close to Cyrano requires infusions of a special medication. Diana asks Maggie to try to infiltrate the circle of Philip Hardwicke, who needs constant monitoring for a seizure disorder caused by an old head injury.
- Maggie befriends Hardwicke’s teenage daughter, Bella and is able to steal a thumb drive containing Hardwicke’s files.
- Danny tells Maggie that he needs to visit a patient on Malta. He also knows about the missing drive. Maggie gives it back to him, but warns him that Hardwicke is extremely dangerous.
- Danny flies back to London with Hardwicke, but his plane explodes, killing Hardwicke, Danny, and Bella, a bombing presumed to be revenge for the capture of Cyrano.
Plot Summary with Spoilers for The Summer Guests
The book begins with a mysterious event in Purity Maine in 1972: a town resident crashes his van into Main Street and then comes out shooting. Three people lose their lives.
In the present (which is a few months after the events of the first book) the Martini Club members gather in Maggie’s garden.
In addition, former summer resident Ethan Conover brings his wife Susan and stepdaughter Zoe to Moonview, his family’s house on Maiden Pond, for his father’s memorial service.
But after a swim in the lake with Callie, Zoe suddenly goes missing and Jo Thibodeau is called into action.
Spoilers start here!
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Suspicion quickly falls on Maggie’s neighbor, Luther Yount, as his granddaughter Callie was swimming in Maiden Lake with Zoe shortly before she went missing.
Luther tells Maggie that he picked up both girls after their swim and brought them back to his farm to see the animals. Then he dropped Zoe off at the lake’s boat ramp. After that he drove to Augusta to run errands.
Zoe’s backpack is found south of town, which was the same direction Luther drove after dropping Zoe off.
Zoe’s mother realizes that Zoe must have been back at Moonview after Luther dropped her, as she changed clothes.
A body is discovered
Divers search Maiden Pond and find a body. But it’s the body of a woman older than Zoe who has been in the lake longer.
Ruben Tarkin tells Susan he hasn’t forgotten what her family and Arthur Fox did.
Luther is arrested after Zoe’s blood is found in his truck. Maggie is allowed to speak to him, and tells him that police know he drove to Lewiston, not Augusta. He says he went there because he wanted to kill a man.
Maggie runs into Susan at the town library and Susan asks why Reuben Tarkin has a grudge against the Conover family. Susan shows Maggie an old newspaper article about Reuben’s father, Sam Tarkin, who is the man in chapter one who drove his van into Main Street, mowed down three people, and shot one.
Maggie is more interested in the article below, about a missing woman named Vivian Stillwater.
Zoe’s phone is tracked
Jo tells the Martini Club that the blood in Luther’s truck is menstrual. As Jo gets the news that Zoe’s phone has been turned on, the club follows her to Farley Wade’s house.
They don’t find Zoe at Wade’s, but they do find her phone, which Wade says he found in the bed of his truck.
Jo interviews Reuben Tarkin, who has an alibi. Then she speaks to her father, who says he knew Sam Tarkin, who never showed any hint of violence.
Luther tells Maggie that he was in Lewiston to pay off Callie’s drug addict father, Jesse. She and Luther go to Jesse’s apartment, find evidence of drug dealing, and call in an anonymous tip to the police.
Zoe is found
Ingrid calls and says Zoe Conover has been found.
Hikers found Zoe at the bottom of a ravine. Worried that Luther will again be a suspect, the Martini club goes to look at the area where Zoe was found and discover her swimming goggles.
Ethan tells Susan his new book is about Vivian Stillwater, the woman who went missing in 1972. He says she worked for Hannah Greene’s father.
Jo arrives at Maggie’s and reluctantly discusses the case with her. Zoe was found wearing a swimsuit and a single gold earring.
They discuss why Zoe, her backpack and phone were found in three different places.
Ingrid raises the group’s intriguing theory;
Their theories:
- Zoe’s backpack was planted away from Maiden Pond to draw attention away from the pond and the body that was found there.
- Finding the identity of the woman in the lake is the key to everything.
- There is a connection between Vivian, the Conovers, the Greenes and Arthur Fox. Dr. Greene was a pharmacologist and George Conover worked in pharmaceutical sales.
- Zoe practiced free diving and may have discovered the skeleton and was assaulted to keep her quiet.
We learn more about the Conover-Greene-Fox-Stillwater connection
Arthur Fox tells Susan that Vivian Stillwater, Dr. Greene’s assistant, had an affair with George Conover. He warns her that some family secrets are better left buried.
Maggie finds Vivian’s sister, Cathy, who tells them Vivian is dead. In 1972, Vivian was coming to visit Cathy but was seen walking barefoot on the side of a road and was hit by a car. She was in a coma for three year and then died.
Cathy says Vivian was a neurochemist working on a hush-hush government project.
Maggie tells the group that Vivian’s death certificate and accident report were all redacted and hidden.
Reuben takes Maggie to “the Lodge,” a place where Dr. Greene held drug testing parties. His father Sam was a participant. All participants were paid by the government.
The Martini Club shares all this with Jo: Dr. Greene, Arthur Fox, Elizabeth Conover and Vivian Stillwater were all CIA agents doing drug experiments. (This is based on the real Project MKUltra!)
Jo interviews Elizabeth Conover, who doesn’t deny her CIA past but does deny knowing anything about the bones in the lake.
She also shows Elizabeth Conover a facial reconstruction sketch of the woman in the pond and Elizabeth freezes.
Susan makes a shocking discovery
Susan finds Zoe’s earring in Brooke’s car trunk.
Elizabeth confronts Colin, saying, “I know what happened to Anna.”
Colin admits having an affair with Anna, but insists that George paid Anna off and drover her to the airport.
Brooke finds Susan in her room and mentions the earring. She tells Brooke she is going to tell the police.
Brooke pushes Susan down the stairs.
Susan hears Brook asking Kit to help her drown Susan in the pond. They take her there and push her under the water.
Jo arrives at Moonrise and finds blood. Ethan runs out and pulls Susan out of the water.
The Summer Guests Ending Explained
Brooke found out that Colin was having an affair with Anna, their son’s nanny.
When Brooke found out that Anna was pregnant, she snapped and pushed Anna down the stairs. George hid Anna’s body in the lake and made up the story about driving her to the airport.
Years later, Zoe saw Anna’s body at the bottom of the lake and told Brooke.
Brooke hit Zoe in the head and asked Kit to help her put Zoe in the trunk, then planted the backpack and phone to draw attention away from the lake.
With their secrets exposed, Elizabeth and Arthur fled town.
Susan and Zoe recover and also leave town.
As of February 2024, The Spy Coast is in development as an Amazon series! Exciting news!
What did you think of this one? I liked it more than The Spy Coast. I am enjoying the developing relationship between Jo and the Martini Club and I liked the slow burn suspense and hidden secrets more than all the spy stuff!
But what did YOU think? Talk to me in comments!