Camino Island

Captivating Reading

This mystery novel spins a story of romance and local color, effectively weaving them together into a yarn with books, writers, deception, and stolen manuscripts, culminating into a frantic search to find the latter before they quietly disappear into the underground libraries of wealthy private collectors.

Author John Grisham will command your attention as he moves you through this fast-paced drama in a desperate race against time to solve the heist of five original, handwritten works by renowned author, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Allegedly stored in a rare books vault at an undisclosed location within the Firestone Library of Princeton University, Fitzgerald’s original manuscripts, Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby, The Last Tycoon, This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned are protected by sophisticated technology in a climate-controlled environment.

Overcoming tight security with the help of a master computer hacker and diversionary tactics, a team of thieves has found a way to execute a planned-to-perfection heist.  However, quietly disposing of its cache while avoiding apprehension becomes a wholly different matter.

Shocked at the loss of such priceless documents, Princeton officials quickly engage the assistance of FBI agents who hire a group of specialized private investigators to hunt down the thieves in a parallel search.

The story becomes much more fascinating when Mercer Mann, a struggling writer with only one published novel to her credit finds that her writing skills have gone dry.  Hoping to rehydrate them, she moves to Florida’s Camino Island off the coast of northeast Florida, the locale of her happy childhood.

 

In this little bit of heaven off the Sunshine State’s seacoast, Mann slowly becomes involved with Bruce Cable, an entrepreneurial spirit who has built up a business as the colorful owner of one of the few small, independent, yet profitable bookstores still thriving in America.

The fates of Mann and Cable become intertwined as the hunt for the thieves and the recovery of Fitzgerald’s manuscripts nears its close.

Will the burglars ever be apprehended? Will the irreplaceable documents be found intact and returned to the Firestone Library?

It’s a barnburner!