Maggie Bird is many things. A chicken farmer. A good neighbour. A seemingly average retiree living in the seaside town of Purity. She’s also a darned good rifle shot. And she never talks about her past.
But when an unidentified body is left on Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a calling card from old times. It’s been fifteen years since the failed mission that ended her career as a spy, and cost her far more than her job.
Step forward the ‘Martini Club’ – Maggie’s silver-haired book group (to anyone who asks), and a cohort of former spies behind closed doors. With the help of her old friends – and always one step ahead of the persistent local cop – Maggie might still be able to save the life she’s built.

‘The Spy Coast‘ surprised me. I knew it was about retired spies. I expected a borderline cosy story, with older folks showing they still have enough tricks up their sleeves to deal with problems. What I got was a proper spy thriller spanning decades and continents with nothing particularly cosy about it. There were execution-style killings, betrayals, kidnapping, a significant body count and a rising sense of threat. 

The story starts with Maggie Bird in her guise as a retiree who has moved to rural Maine and taken up chicken farming. It then cuts back decades to when Maggie was a CIA operative. 

As the plot moves between the two timelines, it reveals how Maggie came to be in Maine, the price she paid for her former career and why someone now seems determined to kill her. 

It was a solid, character-driven spy thriller with some touches of humour, mostly generated by how Maggie and her ‘book club’ friends (who are also ex-CIA) run rings around the earnest and resourceful local sheriff. 

Age is a factor for Maggie and the other ex-spies. They are all in their sixties and seventies. It’s not just that they are less agile and have less stamina than when they were in the field. It’s also that their perspective has changed. When Maggie resigned from the CIA, she was tired and disillusioned. She no longer believed that she was changing the world for the better. She had suffered losses and wanted to leave that world behind her. Some of her Book Club friends miss the opportunity to practice the skills that made them valuable to the CIA but all of them are looking for a quiet life in Maine. I think the story was stronger because Maggie was looking back on what she’d done and seeing it through older eyes that were more conscious of consequences and less certain about the value of victories.

I liked that, while the story stands up as a spy thriller in both timelines, its main focus was on exploring Maggie’s journey to becoming the current version of herself. Along the way, as well as travelling the world to discover who is behind the threat to her life, confronting assassins and trying to decide who, if anyone, she can trust, Maggie tries to reconcile her past with her present. She recognises that she can’t leave her past behind but that she doesn’t want it to be the only thing that defines her future.

I found Maggie and her friends engaging. I want to see more of them. I’d also like to see how the bright but out-gunned local Sheriff will adapt to having a group of ex-spies in her small town. I already have the sequel, ‘The Summer Guests‘(2025) on my shelves and I hope to get to it soon.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘The Spy Coast’, narrated by Hillary Huber and Brittany Pressley, one narrating the chapters written from Maggie’s point of view and one narrating the chapters written from the Sherrif’s point of view. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.