Now it's time to quit our island: CAMINO WINDS.

Camino Winds by John Grisham
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Engaging mystery where good battles evil

In John Grisham's second book featuring Camino Island, Bruce Cable's Bay Books--and the entire island--is preparing for the first direct hit by a hurricane in a long time. Hurricane Leo heads straight for the island. Bruce and a small band of friends ignore the mandatory evacuation order and hunker down to ride out the storm. In the aftermath, the island is destroyed in many places. And Nelson Kerr, one of Bruce's author friends, is found dead. But his injuries appear to be worse than the storm: it looks like he may have been murdered. The police are overwhelmed by the storm, so Bruce starts investigating. Was Nelson's death died to his latest novel? Bruce's snooping will lead him down a shocking road filled with danger.

It takes a disaster to make you appreciate the basics.

This was a typical Grisham quick read. It builds on the first book, but focuses mainly on Bruce. We see little of Mercer, a main character in book one, which was unfortunate. But Bruce is a blustery star, who can easily dominate both in his life and a novel. He has a huge group of friends, literary and "normal" alike. One is Nelson Kerr, a former lawyer with a big firm in San Francisco. He ratted out a client, a defense contractor who was illegally selling high-tech military stuff to the "bad guys." Nelson settled his case and fled to the island after a divorce. He's been working on another book and we learn quickly that his work may have gotten him killed.

It's easy to feel the storm and its tension through Grisham's picturesque writing. Leo hits quickly and the devastation that follows is bad. The post-hurricane feeling on a nearly abandoned Camino Island seems oddly aligned to the pandemic--at least when I read this in May--or it's easy to read that sense into everything I read.

Still, despite the hurricane and the murder and other various killings, this is actually a fun read. Grisham gives us an engaging mystery, and I love his "good versus evil" formula. It always works so well for him and this is one of his breezier presentations. While there isn't much depth, it's a fast read with interesting characters and a snappy mystery. 3.5 stars.

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