A fictitious island resort close to Florida free of lawyers and peopled by writers, poets and seasonal residents would hardly seem John Grisham country had he not given his readers the novel, Camino Island, in 2017. Many of the 2017 characters return in Camino Winds. This novel does not confine itself to intrigues about stolen manuscripts like its predecessor but moves on to murder. Bruce Cable, the proprietor of the unexpectedly glamorous bookshop, Bay Books, thrives as a connoisseur of bestsellers, nurturing ‘his’ authors with assiduity and imagination, holding readings four times a week and, most important, hosting writers on their promotional tours with such success that publishers are only too glad if one of their authors is invited for a reading and signing session. He is also at the centre of the unsteadily glittering group of writers who live on the island: a brooding poet short on humour, two elderly women, live-in partners, popular for the soft porn they write under a shared pseudonym, a former jailbird who is now a success with his crime thrillers, an enigmatic author who fictionalizes real-life scandals, as well as others. There is Noelle, with whom Bruce is in an open marriage, and Mercer Mann, whose return to the island with a potential bestseller after her sudden departure three years ago is the reason for the cocktail party with which the book opens.
But the most fascinating character, more engaging than Bruce, is Leo, the category four hurricane which grows, pauses, dwindles, regains strength, stalls, builds up, turns away and back again and then roars on to Camino Island. Grisham’s prose is both powerful and witty when the story follows Leo’s whims, a force of nature with a mind of its own that eludes the calculations of the most sophisticated instruments. People get a narrow window to leave the island before Leo strikes just after the sparkling little party Bruce arranges for Mercer and a few hours before her reading is to take place at Bay Books. Most residents leave, and the fate of those who refuse to go is mixed.
Review: Camino Winds by John Grisham, Hodder & Stoughton, Rs 399 Amazon
After the hurricane has passed, Bruce, together with ‘Bob’ Cobb, the ex-con thriller writer, and Nick Sutton, a student who looks after his grandparents’ island home in the summer and helps in Bay Books while reading a crime novel a day and planning to write one soon, discover what looks like the accidental death of a close acquaintance. Nick, with his eyes sharpened by crime stories, discovers it is a murder, one that obviously took place under cover of the storm. Since the police are too busy with the ravaged state of the island, the three friends begin investigating the death.
Although their progress is far from smooth, and not always pleasant — their intervention leads to another death — the reader’s easeful immersion in the story is not unduly ruffled. In spite of the hideous damage on the island, and changes of attitude that even affect the usually unfazed Bruce, the sun seems to shine quite cheerfully once it returns after Leo has left with a last flattening lash. The deaths are cruelly wrought, and the scandal that is uncovered by Bruce and his friends, which has to do with the exploitation of old people’s dementia, is humongous enough to give the federal police sleepless nights, yet the novel is fun. The relaxed rhythm of Camino Island seems to calm its tensions and lighten its whiffs of sadness.
