I actually reviewed the first book in this series, "Camino Island" in 2017. When I gave it a read back in that year, it wasn't a bad read, as it's always great to see John Grisham get away from his legal thriller genre and write something else. One of the biggest surprises in the last 15 years of books, has been that John Grisham, known for most of his career as the king of the airport novel, had started to show he can write more than his genre. He can write actual stories about people who weren't lawyers or in a crisis that required a lawyer. He started to show range with his sports novels, like "Playing For Pizza" in 2007 and "Calico Joe" in 2012. In 2009, he published a well received short story collection called "Ford Country". "Camino Island" in 2017 was another non-legal thriller, this time about a shy young woman named Mercer who, while going back to the island to pack up her grandmother's things, gets hired by an insurance firm to track down a rare manuscript stealer named Bruce. She gets wrapped up in his pretentious group of author friends. The book was alright. Not one of his stronger books, but a decent read. So, I was surprised to see he wrote a 2020 follow up called "Camino Winds".
This one involves Bruce again, along with his group of writer friends, all hanging out on the Florida island, drinking wine, talking books, and spending time in Bruce's bookshop. While there, one of the writers, Nelson, is murdered after a massive storm takes place. At first, cops assume he died because he decided to stay behind and brave the storm, but another writer in the group suspects he was murdered by a woman he had a fling with. Bruce and his friends decide to solve the case themselves, because...well, I call the cops, but these are writers unlike me, so they will give solving the case a try. Basically, they dig deeper and deeper, leading to a conspiracy involving nursing homes, and an unpublished manuscript by Nelson. There's also a long chapter which feels like it fits right in a run of the mill Grisham book, but feels out of place for this one.
Mercer makes a couple quick cameos in the book, as she is now a bestselling author herself. She became successful but I'm not sure her personality would have changed from a shy young woman to a successful as heck author dating an attractive college boy, and who is now part of Bruce's group. It seemed like too radical a change.
Either way, it's hard not to finish a Grisham novel. For better or worse, Grisham is always a very, very solid writer. His narratives never become messes, and his prose is always witty and clean. If you see it in the library, it won't be a bad idea to pick it up, but it will likely be next to better books by him.
