Maggie Bird was an agent with the CIA.
Back in the day, as we say. Sixteen years ago, at the time we first meet her, she became extremely disgusted with the Agency and left - for very good reason you will discover slowly and deliciously over time in the that recorded adventure. Before that departure, she had been an excellent field agent for likely just over two decades. We are not talking a pencil-pusher, either; she was the real deal and had a good number of accomplishments on her record. And for those doing any addition here on the years, you will learn immediately through reading that she is now 60 years old. No spring chicken anymore but definitely not decrepit.
So for a lot of years she had faithfully and earnestly served America as a spook in some interesting places. Then what happened, happened and she left the fold and changed her name - it had been Porter for most of her life - and wandered the world for most of that one and a half decade. A bit more than three years before we start following her, a former friend and colleague in the Agency who had also reached retirement age and had made a home in Maine, suggested to her it was a great place - peaceful and fairly isolated. She came, she liked, she stayed.
Now this former deadly operative (okay, she has not really lost the deadly adjective) is happily living on a farm raising chickens (roughly 140 depending on the success of visiting eagles, owls, and foxes). She has a small cadre of friends from the old days; fellow former CIA agents and/or analysts who have also settled in the area. There is the aforementioned friend, named Declan Rose. There is Ben Diamond. And there is a married couple, Ingrid and Lloyd Slocum. All five of these people have some similar skills and some very dissimilar talents.
And all five of these people who make up what Bird dubbed on the spur of the moment the Martini Club are happily retired and out of the business. Up until they are not.