The Spy Coast

“Over the sixteen years since my retirement, I’ve slowly let down my guard. Now I’m so accustomed to being a small-town chicken farmer that I’ve started to believe that’s all I am. The way Ben’s just a retired salesman for hotel supplies, and Declan’s just a retired history professor. We know the truth, but we keep each other’s secrets, because we each have our own to guard. There’s safety in mutual blackmail.”

Sixteen years is the same amount of time that Diana mentioned, making an immediate connection between their two storylines. This reflection introduces the covers of Maggie and her friends, innocuous jobs that hide a complex history. This also points out the issue of trust that Maggie and her friends deal with. Although they have known each other for years, because of the nature of their work, they aren’t able to fully trust each other. This creates a tension that remains between Maggie and her friends throughout the novel and is characteristic of the spy thriller genre.

“When you live your whole life in one town, you know all the places where tragedy has occurred, because bad memories are as permanent as gravestones.”

Chapter 3 shifts to Jo’s point of view and introduces her character. Like Maggie and her friends, Jo’s personal history informs the way she sees the present. However, unlike them, she lives among those memories and sees them every day in the course of her duties. This gives her special insight that Maggie and her friends lack and makes Jo valuable in solving the case.

“I look around the table at our circle of lived-in faces, at hair that’s gray, or going gray, or—in the case of Ben—gone entirely. There’s more than a century’s worth of experience accumulated in these brains, but time moves on. Young people move in, and we are expendable.”

The novel highlights the theme of Age, Wisdom, and Experience through Maggie and her friends. Here, Maggie reflects on the irony that although they are vastly experienced, because of their age, they are dismissed. She highlights once again how appearances cannot be trusted because she and her friends are seen as irrelevant while they are, in fact, the ones most capable of solving the case.

“There is nothing flashy here, nothing to make a cop take notice. Ordinary is what my house says to anyone who visits. Ordinary is quiet and unobtrusive and safe.”

Maggie constantly uses the difference between Appearances Versus Reality to hide her skills as an operative. She uses society’s definition of an “ordinary” woman her age as a cover, meaning that she can make herself invisible by acting timid, unobservant, and only concerned with domestic life, qualities that are the exact opposite of her personality and interests.

“I think of the go bag next to my bed and how easy it would be to drop out, skip town, even skip the country. But this is my home now, and I’ve spent two years building this life, settling into its rhythms. I’m tired of moving, tired of searching for a landing spot. This is it. This is where the wandering stops.”

After Bianca’s death, Maggie contemplates going on the run from whoever is pursuing her. However, part of Maggie’s character arc is about facing her past so that she can move forward. As the novel progresses, the plot reveals what she’s been running from, and when given the motivation to run again, she decides to face her past at last.

“Let them focus on the dead woman, Jo thought. She was going to focus on the one who was very much alive.”

Jo has been forced out of the investigation by the state police. However, here she shows her characteristic sharp intelligence by realizing that the real story is why Bianca was found in Maggie’s driveway. As a woman in law enforcement, Jo often faces discrimination and is used to finding creative ways around obstacles.

“What really hurts, thought Jo, is the fact these people, these civilians, seem to know as much as I do. This isn’t right. What was really not right was the fact she, the acting police chief of Purity, had been sidelined from the investigation of a murder that had happened in her own hometown.”

Jo realizes that the Martini Club is investigating Bianca’s death and the mysteries surrounding it. She is already annoyed about being forced out of the investigation by other law enforcement officials, and her annoyance is doubled by the fact that even civilians know more about the case than she does. Instead of remaining left out, Jo uses her determination to regain control of the investigation, highlighting The Dangers of Underestimating Powerful Women.

“As everyone else in the class focused on the anatomical details of dissection—how many lobes the lung consisted of and where the spleen sat in relation to the liver—Jo found herself thinking instead about the decedent himself, and what his last moments had been like.”

Upon attending Bianca’s autopsy, Jo flashes back to the only other one she’s ever attended. Here, she shows that the secret to her success is that she can look beyond the technical details of an investigation to the humanity of those involved. She uses these same skills to look beyond Maggie’s “ordinary” presentation and see that there is more to her and the investigation around her, highlighting the theme of Appearances Versus Reality.

“With the sting on my tongue comes memories of London. Of the first time I tasted Longmorn, with Danny.”

When things get serious, Declan brings out Maggie’s bottle of Longmorn whisky, a motif throughout the novel. The Longmorn brings up the theme of Age, Wisdom, and Experience, as it connects to Maggie’s long history. However, its connection is complicated by the fact that, for Maggie, Longmorn also always reminds her of Danny.

“The sadness in his voice is emblematic of how hopeless all these different conflicts are, how hopeless his world has become. Doku does not wish death to Murat, yet here he is betraying him, because he sees that in the long run, none of it matters.”

Maggie’s informant, Doku, is resigned to betraying his colleague, and this reflects Maggie’s ambivalence about her work. This feeling is reinforced by the deaths of Doku and his family. The event marks a low point in her career, but it is just after this that she meets Danny, and her life changes.

“He’s weary of his work, just as I’m weary of mine. What a fine pair we are, both of us yearning to escape the boxes we’ve shut ourselves into.”

Maggie and Danny both find themselves in jobs that don’t fit the way they want to lead their lives. Yet both, as Maggie highlights, find it impossible to escape—Danny because he needs the money for his mother, and Maggie because she believes in protecting innocent victims and wants to make up for her past failures. After Danny’s death, Maggie finds herself stuck in her remorse and guilt, and over the course of the novel, her character arc involves escaping the box and moving forward with her life.

“There I stand, surveying the darkness. It seems I’m always surveying the darkness, looking for an enemy who sometimes is far too close to home.”

This quote comes just after Diana has upended Maggie’s world by suggesting that Danny is an operative who was assigned to her. Maggie is usually assured and confident, but now she is questioning even those closest to her, highlighting the theme of Appearances Versus Reality. She uses the literal darkness to parallel the metaphorical darkness she experiences in not being able to discern the truth.

“[Bella’s] eyes are a pale green and almost lashless, like some aquatic creature peering at me through aquarium glass.”

Maggie is meeting Bella for the first time. This description makes the girl seem otherworldly and distant, contrasting directly with an earlier description of Silvia’s sensual beauty. Using an “aquatic creature” as a simile, Maggie illustrates how Bella is trapped, in fact imprisoned, by her father. It also shows the compassion that Maggie feels for her.

“It’s what a bride would do, bring her new husband to a romantic village on the Aegean to drink wine and make love and pretend that what we share is real.”

Throughout the novel, Maggie is constantly put in the position of considering what an “ordinary” woman would do, highlighting the theme of Appearance Versus Reality. Her roleplaying here is complicated by the fact that everything she feels for Danny on their honeymoon is real. However, this reality is complicated by the fact that she is also withholding information from Danny and is being forced to live a double life.

“I’m glad not to find any dead hens this morning. I have not lost any since the day I killed the fox, but it’s only a matter of time before another predator shows up to take its place. They always do.”

Maggie equates the fox she killed at the beginning of the novel with the predators that are hunting her. Her reference foreshadows that, moments after this thought, an assassin will shoot at her from the woods, proving her comment about predators returning to be correct.

“I’m just Danny’s American wife, here to have a conversation about…what? My state of mind should be puzzlement. Curiosity. That’s what innocent Maggie Gallagher would be feeling now, and that’s what he should see in my face.”

Maggie again plays the role of an “ordinary” woman for her meeting at Hardwicke’s office. Her roleplaying relates to the theme of Appearances Versus Reality, highlighting the disparity between the two lives Maggie is leading: Maggie Gallagher, “Danny’s American wife,” and her role as a CIA operative. She cannot always compartmentalize these roles, which leads her moral and emotional struggles.

“I feel as if I’ve killed something hopeful, destroyed whatever chance there might be for us, but I have to do it. Duty demands it. Innocent victims demand it.”

Maggie doesn’t often express the passion behind her commitment to her career, but she does so after the death of Doku’s sister and niece. When forced to choose between her relationship with Danny and her work, she decides to prioritize her work. Choosing to help innocent victims shows that she sees herself as a heroic or savior figure, who makes personal sacrifices for the greater good. This is why she is willing to jeopardize her most important relationship.

“I can imagine what his childhood was like, growing up motherless. I know he was shipped off to boarding school when he was twelve, because his diplomat father was too wrapped up in world affairs to be a proper parent, and I think of my own teenage years, burdened with an alcoholic father I could not wait to escape. It was another variation of being motherless, and neither version was a happy one.”

Maggie highlights Danny’s childhood here, connecting it to her own experience with her father’s alcohol addiction. This thread about absent mothers and controlling fathers connects to Bella’s experience with Hardwicke. It also parallels the experiences of Bella’s foil, Callie, whose mother died when she was a child, leaving Luther, her grandfather, to raise her.

“I’m actually quite impressed because she’s learned these details far more quickly than I expected a small-town cop would be able to. We’ve underestimated her, which perhaps says more about us than about her. What other surprises will she spring on us.”

For the first time, Maggie seriously realizes Jo’s insightfulness and intelligence. Maggie relates to being underestimated, which connects to the theme of Age, Wisdom, and Experience. Although Maggie and her friends all know what it feels like to be underestimated, they have done the same thing to Jo, not able to see past her status as a “small-town cop.”

“It must infuriate him that even with all his money, all his power, he cannot control the women in his life.”

Hardwicke runs a tightly controlled company but cannot manage his personal relationships, drawing a parallel to Maggie’s own struggles to balance her double life. Camilla, Bella’s mother and Hardwicke’s ex-wife, takes pride in knowing that he cannot control her and her daughter, highlighting The Dangers of Underestimating Powerful Women.

“Now is the time to run, before he returns, before he tells Hardwicke that I am the one who betrayed him, but I cannot seem to stir. I am fixed to my chair, as immobile as a prisoner strapped in for execution. I don’t care if someone does put a bullet in my head, because it would mean Danny has betrayed me, and that would feel like a death all its own.”

Danny has just revealed that he knows that Maggie took Hardwicke’s thumb drive and takes it to Hardwicke’s room. In this moment, Maggie realizes that, one way or another, she will learn whether she can trust Danny. If she were wrong to trust Danny, not only would it break her heart, but it would mean that she cannot trust her instincts or perspective as an operative, and she will have failed in both her personal and professional lives.

“The advantage of having no family ties, no children, no husband or lover, is that it makes you invulnerable. Every person you love is a weakness in your armor. When you care about no one, you can be fearless because the world cannot destroy you, the way it almost destroyed me.”

After Danny’s death, Maggie kept to herself and did not develop any serious personal relationships. However, without realizing it, she’s become involved with Luther and Callie, which now puts them both in danger. Once again, Maggie’s actions have inadvertently affected the people that she loves, and her history with Danny and Bella makes her even more determined to save Callie.

“For the moment I’m adrift, as I was in the years after Danny’s death, moving from place to place, searching for a landing spot where I could leave behind the old Maggie and become someone new, someone who wasn’t haunted by thoughts of what might have been.”

Maggie has just found out that, at least as far as Sylvia knows, Phillip Hardwicke truly is dead, and with that, her only lead is fruitless. Her feelings at this moment echo how she felt after Danny’s death, before she moved to Purity and found a home. The feelings are prompted by the fact that, if she doesn’t solve this mystery, she will again lose both loved ones and her home—this is her chance, as far as she is concerned, to right some of the wrongs in her past so that she can find closure and move forward.