The Summer Guests

“She had no idea how a writer’s mind worked, but she imagined it was like a dozen different voices shouting in your head, demanding you tell their story their way. It seemed like a form of madness.”

This metafictional touch comments on the writerly process, hinting at the personal perspective of author Tess Gerritsen and how she might feel when she is working on a novel. The association of writing with potential “madness” also foreshadows Susan’s unease when she sees Ethan is writing about a missing woman, though it turns out that this has nothing to do with Zoe’s disappearance.

“The wealthy often liked to masquerade as common folk, and Maine was where they came to indulge that fantasy.”

Reuben’s resentment toward those who own vacation homes around Maiden Pond develops the theme of Tensions Between Upper and Lower Classes. He judges these “summer people” and those like them for the way they “masquerade” as lower-income people like himself when they come to Maine, suggesting that they are playacting a rustic life that they do not truly understand and would not appreciate if they did.

“Purity might sound like a town where you could let your kids ride their bikes unsupervised, where you could sleep at night with your windows unlatched, but in truth, this had never been as innocent a place as people wanted to believe. No town was.”

Police Chief Jo Thibodeau acknowledges the Difference Between Appearances and Reality. The name of the town, Purity, implies a place of moral virtue and pristine character, but it is eventually revealed that the town has a dark past that includes murder and Project MKUltra experiments.

“To anyone who saw them, they probably looked like five retirees out for a leisurely hike, but these retirees had come prepared to tackle a crime scene.”

The members of the Martini Club use their appearance to their advantage. Often people overlook the elderly, assuming that they are not capable of real action. The Martini Club uses these assumptions to involve themselves in the investigation of Zoe Conover. This dynamic further develops the theme of the difference between appearances and reality.

“Jo did not look forward to seeing Zoe Conover’s body dragged out of the water, but that’s where she probably was right now, lying beneath this satiny surface. Not a kidnapping, not a murder, but a tragic accident.”

Like Maggie Bird and the Martini Club, Police Chief Jo makes several incorrect assumptions about what caused Zoe Conover’s disappearance. Here, she anticipates finding Zoe’s body in the pond when ultimately it is Anna’s body in the pond. These misconceptions often dovetail with the novel’s use of red herrings, encouraging readers to put their trust in characters who turn out to be mistaken so as to heighten the surprise later on.

“The sheer ordinariness of this day enraged Susan. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping in the trees, while her own world was about to collapse around her.”

This quote illustrates Susan’s growing sense of frustration, anger, and fear amid the investigation into her daughter’s disappearance. Her inner turmoil contrasts sharply with the idyllic scene around her, heightening the tragedy of her situation.

“She went to the window and gazed across the water to the opposite bank, where Reuben Tarkin was already pulling his kayak ashore. What hasn’t he forgotten? she wondered.

What did the Conovers do to you?”

Although Susan finds Reuben unsettling and a little frightening, she does not share the disgust that the wealthy Conovers express toward Reuben. She takes him seriously, as she also feels alienated and judged by Elizabeth Conover and her family. His message invites Susan as well as the reader to wonder about the basis of the grudge between Reuben and the Conovers.

“‘What did you do in Lewiston?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t do anything.’

‘Then why are you so secretive about this?’

‘Because of what I was planning to do. What I would have done, if I’d had the nerve to go through with it.’

‘And what was that?’

At last he met her gaze. ‘Kill a man.’”

This dialogue between Maggie and Luther Younge is a classic example of a red herring. While in police custody, Luther tells Maggie that he went to Lewiston to “kill a man.” This seeming confession comports with Luther’s suspicious activities and appearance, encouraging the reader to suspect that Luther is capable of homicide. However, it soon emerges that Luther is simply being hyperbolic in this exchange.

“She looked around at the five people watching her. Dissecting her. They couldn’t help it; they’d spent their careers scrutinizing people, and old habits died hard.”

Although Jo is friendly with the members of the Martini Club, their history as CIA agents makes them somewhat unsettling. The difficulty that the members of the Club have in cultivating intimacy in friendships and romantic relationships relates to author Tess Gerritsen’s interest in “the emotional toll of having a job in which you cannot tell the truth” (Carlson, Mindy. “How Do You Spell Spy? N-E-I-G-H-B-O-R.” The Big Thrill).

“Jo was aware that Reuben and the Conovers had some sort of long-term feud going on, the genesis of which she did not know, but so far it had not advanced to the violence of the Hatfields and McCoys.”

The Hatfields and McCoys were two families that lived in Appalachia during the Civil War and were notorious for their bloody feud. Their names are here used as a metonym for bitter rivals, such as Reuben Tarkin and the Conovers. Jo admits she does not know the origin of this latter feud, but it is later revealed to be a result of Sam Tarkin’s death.

“Nothing’s ever their fault. It’s always us, always the locals who get blamed. We fix their roofs, mow their grass, scrub their toilets. We’re the reason those pretty houses are still standing. Those people, they use us, and when we’re no longer any good to them, they toss us away.”

This quote from Reuben captures the core of the tensions between the upper and lower classes in Purity, Maine. Reuben’s comment has a duel meaning in that it refers to both the wealthy’s treatment of the lower classes in general and the Conovers’ treatment of his father specifically: Those involved in the MKUltra Project never faced consequences for their experiments, whereas Sam experienced mental illness, societal condemnation, and death.

“Oh, Jo. It must be hard for you, going through life like that. Thinking that everyone’s hiding something, everyone’s a suspect.”

Jo previously noticed the members of the Martini Club closely scrutinizing her, which made her somewhat uncomfortable. In this quote, her father makes a similar observation about Jo herself; like Maggie and the others, she is suspicious of everyone. This illustrates both the similarities between Maggie and Jo and the emotional toll that a life in law enforcement can take on a person.

“If not for the pair of hikers and their wayward dog, Zoe Conover would still be lying down there, never to be found, her remains known only to hungry scavengers that would strip away her flesh and scatter her bones.”

This graphic imagery illustrates the incredible peril in which Zoe Conover found herself. Gerritsen emphasizes the dangers of the wilderness by noting the “hungry scavengers” that would have found her corpse had she died. She was narrowly saved from this peril by a “wayward dog,” suggesting it was simply a matter of luck that she was recovered.

“The pediatricians never could pinpoint why Kit had so many digestive issues. He improved for a bit, after they hired the nanny. But a year later she quit, and the boy seemed to get worse. At one point, he was so thin he looked like a little skeleton. That’s probably why Brooke can’t stop hovering over him.”

This quote subtly suggests that there is something dark lurking behind the closeness of Brooke and Kit’s relationship. Though Kit is now a young man, Brooke continues to “hover” over him—a word that suggests an overbearing presence. Likewise, Brooke’s refusal to hire another nanny suggests she wanted to prevent her son from developing relationships with others besides herself. The fact that Kit’s symptoms briefly disappeared when he was in Anna’s care, only to return after her disappearance, is also suspicious.

“That’s what her marriage had taught her: the more fiercely you loved someone, the deeper the pain when you lost them.”

The traumatic events and broken relationships that Maggie experienced as a CIA agent shape her approach to life. For instance, she is cautious about entering into a relationship with her close friend Duncan Rose, aware of the potential high emotional cost of such an intimate relationship.

“‘I think this is all about her,’ said Jo. ‘The lady in the lake.’”

Jo’s word choice alludes to the “Lady of the Lake” of Arthurian legend—a mythic, sometimes tragic figure. Jo’s use of this language to describe the unknown body in the pond gives an air of legend and mystery to the murder victim.

“You should have spoken to me first. Asked me before getting the police involved. In our family, loyalty always comes before everything. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”

This quote from Elizabeth Conover illustrates the theme of The Protection of Family Members and Family Loyalty. Elizabeth is willing to forego the search for justice in favor of helping her family and protecting its image. Her statement also emphasizes that she has not accepted Susan into the family despite Susan’s marriage to her son, Ethan.

“People can justify almost anything, Maggie. That’s why history keeps repeating itself.”

Referencing a well-known adage, Declan argues that the tendency to excuse and minimize historical tragedies causes them to recur. Declan is specifically referring to the likelihood that Hannah Greene would seek to justify the murderous and unethical actions of her father, Dr. Greene, should she learn of his role in the experiments. However, the observation also broadly alludes to how the CIA justified Project MKUltra as a necessary means of fighting Soviet influence during the Cold War.

“‘We weren’t heartless.’

‘But your project was. You tinkered with people’s minds. You destroyed lives.’”

Jo emphasizes to Elizabeth the devastating toll the Project MKUltra experiments took on many peoples’ lives, including those of Vivian Stillwater, Sam Tarkin, and those Sam killed. She argues that Elizabeth is culpable because she knowingly recruited people into these dangerous experiments. Elizabeth’s insistence that they weren’t “heartless” illustrates Declan’s point about people seeking to justify their actions, no matter how unethical or harmful their behavior.

“If she made the slightest move to harm the girl, Maggie was ready to storm the room to stop her. Then Elizabeth did something Maggie did not expect, something that made her reassess the entire situation.”

The investigators, including Maggie, make several wrong assumptions over the course of their investigation. Here, Maggie realizes that she is wrong about Elizabeth being responsible for Zoe’s disappearance. She assumed that Elizabeth would ruthlessly attempt to take Zoe’s life while Zoe recovers in a hospital room, so she is shocked when Elizabeth acts with seeming compassion by sitting next to Zoe’s bed.

“All these years, they’ve been asking where she went, and I kept telling them we had no idea, that she just quit her job and left. When the truth is, she never did leave. She’s been there, the whole time. In the pond.”

This quote illustrates Elizabeth’s shock at the realization that her husband, George, was involved in Anna’s death. Elizabeth’s surprise shows she truly had nothing to do with Anna’s disappearance, despite Maggie’s suspicions.

“For sixteen long years, through the cycling of the seasons, through hard freezes and spring thaws, Anna had lain hidden at the bottom of Maiden Pond, waiting to be found. Waiting for the moment a teenage girl, swimming on a warm summer’s day, would dive deep enough to glimpse the whiteness of bones.”

Gerritsen uses a series of prepositional phrases to delay the sentence’s main action, employing sentence structure to emphasize the many years that Anna’s body lay undiscovered and unsearched for in the water. The passage as a whole underscores Maiden Pond’s significance as a symbol of hidden secrets.

“‘This case has been one big machine with multiple moving parts. Reuben. The Conovers. Project MKUltra. And the damage your Agency did here.’

‘Which we were not involved in, may I remind you,’ said Ben.

‘Right. Pure as the driven snow, you people.’”

This exchange between Jo and the Martini Club alludes to the terrible deeds that the former CIA agents might have done over the course of their careers—actions that they might have justified to themselves as necessary to achieve their mission objective. Jo’s comment that the members of the Martini Club are “pure as the driven snow” is sarcastic; she is implying that the exact opposite is true.