Desperate Spies

At 75 years old, retired FBI agent Ethel Fiona Crestwater returns for another case of digging up dirt and showing up perps. Ethel may have hung up her badge, but that does not make her any less active on the cases that impact the people closest to her, especially the steady stream of FBI agents she rents rooms to in her home. When an old colleague calls in a favor, she accepts without question. But as she dives deeper into the case, Ethel discovers that it originates in the very sting-operation-gone-bad that sent her into retirement, involving the murder of a college student and the Russian mob. Now, 18 years later, Ethel is back on the case with a new team and even more to lose. De Castrique’s (Secret Lives) sharp protagonist must use her skills and resources in the form of some tech-savvy spies, including Jesse, her beloved double-first-cousin-twice-removed, to keep state secrets out of the wrong hands once and for all. Fans of elderly sleuths will enjoy this political thriller, as well as Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series and Deanna Rayborn’s Killers of a Certain Age.