Town of Spies: A Novel

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Oligarch’s Daughter, a high-octane thriller about a brilliant ex-CIA couple who are pulled back into the deep, shadowy world of espionage when an old colleague and close friend unexpectedly dies in their bucolic Maryland town, where secrets lurk behind every corner.

Ike and Maggie Samson have both recently left the CIA. Ike, charming and charismatic, was a legendary operations officer, an undercover operative, while Maggie was a brilliant analyst specializing in Russian intelligence. Opposites do attract: though they are very much in love, husband and wife are quite different. Ike comes from a broken, blue-collar South Boston family and graduated from a state school, while Maggie, a Yalie, was the child of WASP privilege. The Samsons live on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, in a town that is home to an unusual number of CIA retirees and employees—“the town of spies.”

But the past is never past in the spy game. When Ike’s longtime CIA mentor is killed in a boating accident, his son, Trey—Ike’s godson—insists his father was murdered. Soon after, Trey is charged with the crime and asks Ike and Maggie to clear his name.

Sifting through clues, Ike and Maggie find themselves neck-deep in a much larger investigation—and quickly come to the realization that this murder is just the tip of the iceberg of a dangerous conspiracy, putting them in a peril that could destroy more than just their reputations.