A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. How all these little threads join up is a pleasure for Grisham fans to behold: there’s nothing particularly surprising about it, but he’s a skillful spinner of mayhem and payback.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. “But before he died he gave me what I wanted. But was it Bruce who pulled off the literary crime of the century? Maybe, and maybe not Grisham leaves us guessing even as he makes clear that literary criminals don’t have to be nice guys in order to be good at their work: “He died a horrible death, Oscar, it was awful,” one particularly menacing bookworm tells a quarry once the stolen manuscripts go missing a second time. (Always timely, Grisham is.) Eventually, Bruce and Mercer are reading between the lines and searching for clues between the sheets (“We’re not talking about love we’re talking about sex,” Grisham writes, with a perfectly correct semicolon). Now, who wouldn’t want the mojo associated with holding a piece of paper out of Fitzgerald’s typewriter? Suspicion falls on Bruce, whereupon Mercer enters the picture, for a novel way has been presented to her to pay off some crushing student loans. Scott Fitzgerald’s manuscripts from the Princeton library. It takes us a while to get to the smooth-operating Bruce, though, because Grisham’s first got to set up, with all due diligence, the misdeed to be attended to: the theft of F. But he’s an aging golden boy, the perfect draw for young aspiring novelist and cute thing Mercer Mann, who’s attracted to books and Bruce and the literary scene he’s created on formerly sleepy Camino Island. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.īut eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.A light caper turns into a multilayered game of cat and mouse in a story that, as with most of Grisham’s ( The Whistler, 2016, etc.) crime yarns, never gets too complex or deep but is entertaining all the same.īruce Cable is a bon vivant–ish owner of a bookstore specializing in rarities, which ought to mean he’s covered in dust instead of Florida sunshine. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.

He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.īruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. fast-moving, entertaining tale.”- Pittsburgh Post-GazetteĪ gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library.

Camino island