The New York Times Book Review - Ken Tucker
The veteran suspense novelist is off on a happy lark with Camino Island, a resort-town tale that reads as if Grisham is taking a vacation from writing John Grisham novels. Instead of hurtling readers down the dark corridors of the courthouses that dot his 20-plus legal thrillers, here he gently ushers us onto an island off the coast of Florida, a sleepy place whose town's social life is enlivened by a busy independent bookstore run by a garrulous peacock who has a different-colored seersucker suit for every day of the week…Grisham has said that he and his wife dreamed up Camino Island during a long car ride to Florida, and the book provides the pleasure of a leisurely jaunt periodically jolted into high gear, just for the fun and speed of it.
Publishers Weekly
05/29/2017
The opening chapters detailing an elaborate scheme to steal five F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton are the best part of this thriller from bestseller Grisham (The Whistler). A sophisticated gang pulls off the theft after faking a campus shooting that causes widespread panic. The university’s insurance company, liable for millions, reaches out to unemployed academic and struggling writer Mercer Mann, who has just lost her position at the University of North Carolina and is in desperate financial straits. Mercer grew up spending summers on Florida’s Camino Island, where Donna Watson, the shadowy insurance company representative, believes the stolen manuscripts are; she thinks they’re in the possession of Bruce Cable, who runs a successful independent bookstore there. Despite Mercer’s initial misgivings about functioning as a spy, she agrees to return to Camino Island and insinuate herself into its literary community as a precursor to gaining Bruce’s confidence—and determining whether he has the stolen goods. But after this promising setup, the plot follows predictable lines to a conclusion that genre fans have seen before. Author tour. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (June)
From the Publisher
Tasty . . . a fresh, fun departure . . . sheer catnip . . . a most agreeable summer destination.” —USA Today
Library Journal
05/15/2017
A theft of priceless books from a library, a book dealer who dabbles in the black market of stolen manuscripts, and a novelist who is recruited for a daring mission all add up to what sounds like the ideal beach read.
Kirkus Reviews
2017-05-15
A light caper turns into a multilayered game of cat and mouse in a story that, as with most of Grisham's (The Whistler, 2016, etc.) crime yarns, never gets too complex or deep but is entertaining all the same.Bruce Cable is a bon vivant-ish owner of a bookstore specializing in rarities, which ought to mean he's covered in dust instead of Florida sunshine. But he's an aging golden boy, the perfect draw for young aspiring novelist and cute thing Mercer Mann, who's attracted to books and Bruce and the literary scene he's created on formerly sleepy Camino Island. It takes us a while to get to the smooth-operating Bruce, though, because Grisham's first got to set up, with all due diligence, the misdeed to be attended to: the theft of F. Scott Fitzgerald's manuscripts from the Princeton library. Now, who wouldn't want the mojo associated with holding a piece of paper out of Fitzgerald's typewriter? Suspicion falls on Bruce, whereupon Mercer enters the picture, for a novel way has been presented to her to pay off some crushing student loans. (Always timely, Grisham is.) Eventually, Bruce and Mercer are reading between the lines and searching for clues between the sheets ("We're not talking about love; we're talking about sex," Grisham writes, with a perfectly correct semicolon). But was it Bruce who pulled off the literary crime of the century? Maybe, and maybe not; Grisham leaves us guessing even as he makes clear that literary criminals don't have to be nice guys in order to be good at their work: "He died a horrible death, Oscar, it was awful," one particularly menacing bookworm tells a quarry once the stolen manuscripts go missing a second time. "But before he died he gave me what I wanted. You." How all these little threads join up is a pleasure for Grisham fans to behold: there's nothing particularly surprising about it, but he's a skillful spinner of mayhem and payback.
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