Camino Island by John Grisham *****

John Grisham made his reputation writing legal thrillers. Camino Island is about a heist of the original manuscripts for F Scott Fitzgerald’s novels. As with his other novels, the action opens with black and white—good and evil—opposed in righteous battle, but by the end, the colors and positions blur to a murky gray.

Five men stage a clever heist from Princeton’s rare book collection. Two are immediately caught by the FBI. A remaining partner murders another. One leaves the country. That remaining thief does his best to turns the stolen goods into cash.

The insurance company traces the manuscripts to Bruce Cable, a bookseller on Camino Island. They hire, Mercer Mann, a struggling author with connections to Camino Island, to get close to Bruce Cable.

As a background to the main action of retrieving the manuscripts, a collection of authors talks about the publishing business: publishers, agents, sellers, book tours, and, of course, authors. The authors divide themselves into good and bad; literary and commercial; successful and struggling; drunk and sober.

Myra Beckwith writes romance/pornography. She was very prolific and commercially successful.

Her partner: Leigh Trane were one beautiful literary novel, which no one bought and is struggling with her next one.

Mercer Mann is like Leigh Trane: One well-received novel and years of writer’s block
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Bob Cobb is too drunk to write anything acceptable to his agent or published. Andy Adam is also a previously successful writer, but too drunk now.

Amy Slater is a commercial success with vampire novels.

Jay Arklerood is a brooding poet and frustrated literary star.

The list goes on and on with clever dinner parties, allusions to sex, and plenty of gossip and sarcasm.

There is even a list of advice to writers:
1. No prologues
2. Not too many characters
3. Not too many big words
4. Use quotes for dialogue
5. Looks for sentences and scenes to cut

Let’s call this a writer’s procedural. As a writer, I enjoyed it, and as a John Grisham fan, I also enjoyed it.

I consider the distinguishing feature of Grisham’s writing is his ambivalent endings. As in his legal novels, the conclusion is not a victory for the virtuous and punishment for the evil, but a real-world realization that life goes on and justice requires compromise and acceptance.

Even though this is not a legal procedural, John Grisham fans will not be disappointed. The characters and complexity are there. The author delivers the procedural details readers expect in the mechanics of writing, publishing, and rare book collecting, instead of legal issues. One might imagine, the author has left the legal profession so long ago, that this is now the world where he has the necessary expertise to write in his style.