This book sounds good on paper. A fun, heist-oriented plot; interesting subject matter with the writer angle, great potential for that perfect blend of suspense, mystery and intrigue, and a popular proven author. Unfortunately, it delivers on virtually none of its potential. Before I point out a laundry list of irritations, I will just say a really good way to describe my reading experience with this novel is to point out two things I did while reading it.
1. I had to double-check several times to make sure it wasn't an abridged version.
2. I also, seriously, double-checked to make sure it was a John Grisham novel.
Ok, the laundry list:
1. This book was begging for a subplot about the circumstances around grandma's death. Characters were introduced and the set-up was there.... and then, just nothing.
2. Our protagonist was milk-toast. You neither hate nor like her much.
3. There was seriously NO intrigue, no twist, no turns, no suspense, no mystery... just boring and obvious.
4. No cleverness factor. You can't write a heist novel and have no clever heist things happening. The one or two attempts were pretty weak and again - obvious.
5. Did I miss something? The way the story played up the question of whether or not the Cable's were married made you think it would eventually be relevant to the plot. It wasn't. Very odd.
6. The dangerous aspect of one of the thief's was weird. Early on you think he will factor into the plot on the suspense side of things. He ends up being one more character who kind of disappears from the book, for most of it.
7. I thought it was kind of strange we never had any interaction with the sister.
8. Terrible, terrible ending. It fit the rest of the book though. Anti-climactic and boring.
9. The guy running on the beach? Character sort-of introduced, and then.... nothing.
This book was so short. Makes me think the intention was originally for a longer book and to cover more ground but for some reason it got slashed down to a "short" story. That would help explain the oddness of things, people, etc., that were briefly introduced and then never mentioned again. would have needed to be twice as long to cover the ground it teased it would. If you're going to write a short heist story, it's got to be tight, clever and interesting. This book was the opposite.
Camino Island: A Novel
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Customer reviews
I've read almost everything by John Grisham, usually with great pleasure. But Grisham should resist the absurd publisher pressure to come up with a new title every year. This novel is a hodgepodge of various scenes. The initial caper and the ending ransom scenes are exiting and like old Grisham. But nothing in between has any credibility. The peripheral characters are described with humor but the main character, the boring Mercer, has no believable persona, except as a frustrated unproductive author. One is tempted to tell her, "quit whining." At one point Grisham decided that she ought to have sex, without having given any reasons why she might be aroused, and the sex scenes are not believable. The stolen manuscripts wind up in the hands of a book seller and collector but how they got there is not clear. The security organization tracking down the mss is also unbelievable, spending huge amounts of money to get Mercer intimate with the thief--and all in vain. There are various quotes from Fitzgerald but not what I think best describes this novel: "So we beat on, boats against the current." That's the best description of the plot of this novel.
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Top reviews from other countries
Mandrek Larl
Read only if it’s the last book on the shelf ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2019
World Traveller
Not up to his usual standard
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2017BankFodder
Grisham should stick to what he's good at – and it's not this.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2017
Shirley Blane, author of The Widow's Revenge
An art heist and the hunt to find the manuscripts.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2020
