Camino Island

A fun story about a manuscript heist. But the writing was a bit repetitive and the characters felt flat to me.

I listened to this because it was available through the library. It was a quick listen, reminding me that Grisham does a good job sketching out a plot with a lot of moving pieces. Unfortunately, when this one finished, I was left scratching my head saying, "That was it?" I was waiting for one more layer or another double-cross to make it complex enough to have a staggering reveal. Maybe my expectations are too high for popular fiction.

Camino Island was not a very good book. It's hard to parse the fact that Grisham wrote "The Whistler" and "Camino Island."

Grisham's last two books, Gray Mountain and Rogue Lawyer, were his worst. Camino Island continues the trend.

This may contain small SPOILERS, but it's really not possible to spoil something already so rotten.

1. He clearly forgot the first rule of fiction: Show don't tell. The first hundred or so pages are 99% narrative. It's like a kid telling a story.
2. The main character: one sentence he's a dreamy book lover, the next he's a cutthroat businessman
3. The reader has no personal investment in any of the characters. The villain(s) are irrelevant and not present for the bulk of the book.
4. Grisham takes multiple digs at self-published authors, even though that's the only way this book would be available if it didn't have "John Grisham" name on the cover.

Lazy, lazy writing. He should take a few years off.

Meh.