Just Finished Reading Camino Island by John Grisham

Legal fiction writer John Grisham doesn't always write about lawyers, cases, and trials: his 2017 Camino Island is a "case" in point.  Five original handwritten manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous books, worth several million dollars, have been stolen in an elaborate plot from Princeton University.  The culprits number five, and they experience vastly different fates following the heist.  The question that investigators, including the FBI and an independent private organization, have is who possesses the documents now?  The private firm, hired by the university's insurer, believes it points to a small bookstore on Camino Island just north of Jacksonville, Florida run by a rare books collector/dealer.  They recruit a frustrated young female writer to go to the island, get to know the locals, snoop, and feed back important information.  The details I leave to you, the reader, to discover for yourself...

Three things I picked up from Camino Island.  The first was that no matter how carefully and meticulous to detail one plans and executes an elaborate crime like the one in the story, people are bound to make mistakes...the thieves here blundered badly in various ways.  The second was Grisham's wonderful portrayal of a close-knit community of writers, some successful and some...like Mercer, the protagonist...suffering from writer's block and a lack of confidence.  And third, it may well be that the small locally-owned used bookstore may soon be a relic of the past...Gainesville used to have many of them, but now I only know of one in my hometown, although there is a national chain used bookstore as well.  On our recent trip to Savannah, with all its antiques and history, we only ran across one as well...at least in the Historic District.  Maybe, like the shop on Camino Island (which many think is really Amelia Island), future small bookstores will be run by rare book collectors who sell used books as a side venture...

Camino Island is a good book, not too long and easy to read, with an interesting ending that surprised me a little.  Maybe a sequel is in the works...