Though a fast read my first JG read and kind of a disappointment. He's very good w plot but it reads like a newspaper article. Characters were like they were out of a Clive Cussler novel, thin and over done. Where it could of got interesting he wrote the bad guys off quickly at the end without them getting their hand on the book dealer. Guess I have been spoiled by too many Michael Connelly novels. ( )

3/15/2019 - Tracking down thieves, spying, classic literature, book shops, antiques, France, writers---how can you miss with these ingredients? Especially if you are John Grisham! (I should mention, too, that January LaVoy does a great job at narrating.)

2/9/2023 - Listened to this one again with hubby who hadn't heard it the first time I listened to it.
Camino Island by John Grisham
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT ©: June 6, 2017; ISBN: 978-0385543026; PUBLISHER: Doubleday (Random House); First Printing edition; PAGES: 304; UNABRIDGED
Digital: COPYRIGHT ©: June 6, 2017; ISBN: 978-0385543057; PUBLISHER: Bantam Books (Random House); PAGES: 304; UNABRIDGED Book Design by Maria Carella; Coover design by John Fontana; Cover Photograph by Birgit Tyrell/Arcangel) Includes Questions for Discussion and an excerpt of “The Boys From Biloxi”.

*Audio: COPYRIGHT ©: 6/6/2017; ISBN: ‎ 9780525523284; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape; DURATION: 8:49:38; PARTS: 7; File Size: 252326 KB; Unabridged; (Overdrive: LAPL)

Feature Film or tv: No

SERIES: “Camino Island” Book 1

MAIN CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Ed Folk – Librarian at Firestone Library, Princeton University
Neville Manchin / Mark – Thief- A member of the “gang of five”
Denny – Thief - A member of the “gang of five” – Former Army Ranger
Jerry – Thief - A member of the “gang of five” – former convict
Trey – Thief - - A member of the “gang of five” – former convict
Bruce Cable – Book enthusiast and eventual bookstore owner
Noelle Bonnet – Author & antiques dealer specializing in French Décor
Mercer Mann – Author
Elaine Shelby – Investigator
Myra Beckwith – Author & Island resident
Leigh Trane – Author & Island resident

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it. Now that I am taking these in order, it was next in line of my John Grisham reads.
What it was about: Precious original manuscripts are stolen from a library’s rare books/manuscripts collection. The story tracks the thieves, the path the manuscripts may have taken, and the people trying to recover them.
What I thought: Fun plot (I love all things book, library, or author related), characters (we’re introduced to all those who matter to the story with enough detail to interest me in them, and writing (I love that Grisham doesn’t use pepper his characters with crass language or swearing, and his vocabulary is easy to follow).

AUTHOR:
John Grisham:
From Wikipedia:
“Grisham, the second of five children, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda (née Skidmore) and John Ray Grisham.[6] His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer, and his mother was a homemaker.[9] When Grisham was four years old, his family settled in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.[6]
As a child, he wanted to be a baseball player.[8] As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe, Grisham gave up playing baseball at the age of 18, after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him, and narrowly missed doing the young Grisham grave harm.
Although Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college.[1] He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House.[6] Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager, watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. He wrote about the job: "there was no future in it". At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he "never drew inspiration from that miserable work".[10]
Through one of his father's contacts, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17. It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him "serious" about college. A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety. He did not come out until after the police had detained the perpetrators. He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college. His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating". By this time, Grisham was halfway through college. Planning to become a tax lawyer, he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer.[11]
He attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland.[6] Grisham changed colleges three times before completing a degree.[1] He eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a B.S. degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1981 with a J.D. degree.[6]
After leaving law school, he participated in some missionary work in Brazil, under the First Baptist Church of Oxford.[12]”

NARRATOR:
January LaVoy - From Wikipedia:
“January LaVoy (born in Trumbull, Connecticut) is an American actress and audiobook narrator. As an actress, she is most recognized as Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. LaVoy made her Broadway debut in the Broadway premiere of the play Enron at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 27, 2010.[1]
As an audiobook narrator, she received five Audie Awards and been a finalist for nineteen. In 2013, she won Publishers Weekly's Listen Up Award for Audiobook Narrator of the Year.[2] In 2019, AudioFile named her a Golden Voice narrator.[3]”

*I’ve heard January before and I like her narrations—I am sorry that I have one complaint this time though. There is a female character who we understand to be gregarious, loud and a bit obnoxious, who is teamed with another female character who is reserved. The interchanges between these characters had me constantly adjusting the volume because the obnoxious one is delivered with a screechy-jarring-loud voice, while her reserved friend, perhaps to demonstrate their opposite natures to its fullest, is delivered in a whisper. The obnoxious one was too heard to listen to at normal volume, so we’d turn the volume down and miss the first couple of sentences of her companion until we turned it back up-and then louder to catch the whispers, only to have the obnoxious delivery boom at us. The sequel to this is read well by a man whose delivery of these two characters did not require these adjustments. But, we did miss January all the same.

GENRE:
Fiction; Mystery; Suspense; Thriller

TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (circa 1996, 2005 )

LOCATION:
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, Florida, Camino Island

SUBJECTS:
Investigations; Investigators; Criminals; Rare manuscripts; First edition books; Classic books; Literature; Popular fiction; authors; bookstores; antiques; turtles; F. Scott Fitzgerald, How to Write Fiction

DEDICATION:
“To RENEE
Thanks for the story”

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 1, Section 3:
“The man posing as Professor Neville Manchin arrived at Princeton on a beautiful fall day in early October. He was directed to Rare Books and Special Collections, where he met Ed Folk, who then passed him along to another assistant librarian who examined and copied his Oregon driver’s license. It was, of course, a forgery, but a perfect one. The forger, who was also the hacker, had been trained by the CIA and had a long history in the murky world of private espionage. Breaching a bit of campus security was hardly a challenge.
Professor Manchin was then photographed and given a security badge that had to be displayed at all times. He followed the assistant librarian to the second floor, to a large room with two long tables and walls lined with retractable steel drawers, each of which was locked. Manchin noticed at least four surveillance cameras high in the corners, cameras that were supposed to be seen. He suspected others were well hidden. He attempted to chat up the assistant librarian but got little in return. He jokingly asked if he could see the original manuscript for This Side of Paradise. The assistant librarian offered a smug grin and said that would not be possible.
“Have you ever seen the originals?” Manchin asked.
“Only once.”
A pause as Manchin waited for more, then he asked, “And what was the occasion?”
“Well, a certain famous scholar wished to see them. We accompanied him down to the vault and gave him a look. He didn’t touch the papers, though. Only our head librarian is allowed to do so, and only with special gloves.”
“Of course. Oh well, let’s get to work.”
The assistant opened two of the large drawers, both labeled “This Side of Paradise,” and withdrew thick, oversized notebooks. He said, “These contain the reviews of the book when it was first published. We have many other samples of later reviews.”
“Perfect,” Manchin said with a grin. He opened his briefcase, took out a notepad, and seemed ready to pounce on everything laid on the table. Half an hour later, with Manchin deep in his work, the assistant librarian excused himself and disappeared. For the benefit of the cameras, Manchin never looked up. Eventually, he needed to find the men’s room and wandered away. He took a wrong turn here and another one there, got himself lost, and eased through Collections, avoiding contact with anyone. There were surveillance cameras everywhere. He doubted that anyone at that moment was watching the footage, but it could certainly be retrieved if needed. He found an elevator, avoided it, and took the nearby stairs. The first level below was similar to the ground floor. Below it, the stairs stopped at B2 (Basement 2), where a large thick door waited with “Emergencies Only” painted in bold letters. A keypad was next to the door, and another sign warned that an alarm would sound the instant the door was opened without “proper authorization.” Two security cameras watched the door and the area around it.
Manchin backed away and retraced his steps. When he returned to his workroom, the assistant was waiting. “Is everything okay, Professor Manchin?” he asked.
“Oh yes. Just a bit of a stomach bug, I’m afraid. Hope it’s not contagious.” The assistant librarian left immediately, and Manchin hung around all day, digging through materials from the steel drawers and reading old reviews he cared nothing about. Several times he wandered off, poking around, looking, measuring, and memorizing.

RATING:.
5

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
1-27-2023 to 2-3-2023 ( )

This is a book about, well, books. It's a departure from Grisham's usual legal thrillers but I still felt it was a great read.

Five F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts are stolen from Princeton. The FBI is involved and arrest a couple of the thieves but cannot find the others....or the manuscripts. They start to suspect the involvement of a bookstore owner on Camino Island, Bruce Cable, because he has had some shady undertakings in the past.

Mercer Mann is a writer suffering from writer's block and goes to Camino Island to stay in her grandmother's home hoping to break through the writer's block. While there, she meets several other writers (some established and others struggling) along with Bruce and his wife, Noelle. Unbeknownst to Bruce, Mercer has been "hired" to get information as to whether or not Bruce has the manuscripts or may know where they are. ( )

John Grisham ventures into a different style of legal thriller with Camino Island. The book opens with a sophisticated heist of F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from a secure vault in Princeton University. The story jogs to Camino Island in Florida where Bruce Cable buys a bookstore and turns it into a popular stop for authors on book tour. He puts everything into making this an impressive bookstore with a coffee shop on the second floor. He’s an avid reader and has great relationships with local authors. Bruce also builds a collection of rare books. He’s an excellent businessman and prominent bookseller.

The third component of the story involves Mercer Mann, a writer and college teacher who has recently been laid off. She is offered a large sum of money, by a very cryptic woman, to move to Camino Island and get to know Bruce Cable . She is coached on how to meet his author friends and get close to him. She is directed to report back on her findings.

I loved the dreamy setting of Camino Island with the ease of coastal living, the lifestyle of the writers, and frequent dinner parties. All of the characters were likable, even the ones with an element of suspicion lurking throughout the story. Some aspects of the story were surprising and some were expected natural outcomes. For instance, the implications that may arise when you befriend people you are paid to spy on. The ending was enjoyable that provided closure, and yet makes me curious about the storyline for the next book in the series.

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog ( )

A fairly predictable Grisham mystery, much like other Grisham novels I’ve read. An enjoyable fiction escape. ( )