Camino
Winds has a selling point which neither author nor publisher could have
expected. With coronavirus sweeping through care homes, killing many who are,
at least in the UK, slow to be added to the pandemic death tolls, John
Grisham's second book set on Camino Island, in the wake of being hit by
Hurricane Leo, takes a change of direction as abrupt and unexpected as Leo's
own capricious path of destruction, into a chilling tale of abuse within
American care homes, exploited for huge profit.
It
is a story of two halves. Grisham brings us back to the Florida island and
book-store owner and sometimes gray-area rare-books dealer Bruce Cable, again
surrounded by his 'gang' of writers and poetasting literati. The first half
builds up following the path of Leo as it approaches and then hits the island,
leaving behind the dead body of one of the 'gang', novelist Nelson Kerr,
apparently felled by a tree branch ton loose in the winds. But led by college
student and part-time bookstore employee Nick, who has read every crime novel
ever published, Cable and Crew soon establish it's a murder, not an accident at
all.
So
far so good: it looks like it is going to be a locked-island mystery: virtually
everyone evacuated with Leo approaching, which would limit your suspects
nicely, and the sleepy local police slow and unwilling to react to it as a
homicide. Except another of the 'gang', crime novelist and ex-con Bob, appears
to have come into exceedingly close contact with the likely killer, a contract
pro who is just as likely long gone from the locked room.
And
here the story switches gears for the second half, into a medical conspiracy
thriller, something like Michael Crichton or Robin Cook. Because Nelson Kerr's
novels exposed corporate crime, and it seems he knew that nursing homes are
using a dangerous drug to prolong the lives of non-responsive patients, in order
to keep collecting fees for their care from the government.
The
previous novel, Camino Island, also switched gears mid-way,
starting as a heist novel, then becoming a sort of cat and mouse love story,
part caper thriller and part education of the young would-be writer Mercer
Mann. The switch worked in part because the story became more personal, and its
overall success depended on just how much you cared about the relationship
between Cable (in an open marriage with his French wife, who spends the summers
in France with her lover) and Mann, one in which he educates her in the book
business, writing and crime, as well as love.
Camino
Winds reverses the order, and this is where the problem
lies, because the story become less personal in its second half, especially
because Grisham's strong point is page-turning plot, not characterisation. Mann
comes back, on the final leg of a book tour for her wildly successful novel,
with her new man in tow, and appears once or twice to provide incidental
conveniences for the plot. She is much less interesting with her new distance
from Bruce, and really, there is no other character to take her place.
Apart
from a couple of minimum wage employees in Kentucky nursing homes, who are draw
rather well, few of the characters exhibit much if any character, and it's hard
to tell their lines apart, much less visualise them. They don't require much
depth, but in a series you would expect to be able to recognise recurring
characters. Even the biggest emotional moment for Bruce, a big decision to be
made with his wife Noelle, is passed by almost incidentally, and Noelle doesn't
get much to say.
The
mechanics of this medical conspiracy are intriguing, and the plot clicks. It's
a nice twist to see the firm that tried to out-fox Cable in the first book
brought back on his side (at what seems a ridiculous bargain rate, given the
expenses they seem to incur and the big prize that's there to be won) but you
long for the two women running the show to be fleshed out, at least for Bruce's
sake. It's as if, having committed himself to Noelle, women cease to exist.
Which makes you wonder why Mercer's name is Mann. And there's a very gratuitous
plot twist involving two hit people who suddenly both fail at their jobs.
In
the end, however, the emotional power is just missing. Grisham at best is a
utilitarian writer, but here the prose is sloppy to the point of
distraction. The 'gang', which seems a rather adolescent way to describe this
group, are reintroduced more than once, though the descriptions remain the
same, and unenlightening.
The
crux of Kerr's new novel, for which he is killed, is summarized three times,
once for someone who's supposed to have read it. Other details come up as if
for the first time, even when they've been previously explained. So by the time
the gears all click into the place, the question of whether or not Kerr's work
will be finished is all we are left with, and somehow it does not seem enough.
