Camino Ghosts by John Grisham

Published by Doubleday on May 28, 2024

John Grisham is at his best when he works racial injustice into his stories. In a 2022 interview, Grisham said he “grew up in the Jim Crow South. A very segregated, racist society was almost in my DNA. It’s a long struggle to overcome that and to look back at the way I was raised and not be resentful toward my parents and other people who helped raise me for their extreme racism. It was such a hard right-wing, racist society that I grew up in.”

Camino Ghosts is Grisham’s third novel set on Camino Island, a fictional location off the northeast coast of Florida. A central character is a descendent of slaves. The novel reminds the reader that Florida entered the union as a slave state. I assume that will be enough to get the novel banned in Florida’s school libraries because Ron DeSantis thinks it is wrong to offend the imagined sensibilities of white children by teaching them the truth about southern history. Most rational people believe children should be taught to learn from the past, but denial and ignorance are the preferred tools of education in today’s Florida.

The descendent in question is Lovely Jackson. Now about 80 years old, Lovely lives on Camino Island but was born on a nearby island that the locals call Dark Isle. The island is said to be haunted and enough people have died after venturing to the island that the legends are cautiously regarded as true.

Lovely wrote a book that recounted the oral history her ancestries passed down about their lives. The first island settlers had been captured in Africa for sale into slavery. A few Africans survived a shipwreck, killed the white survivors who enslaved them, and protected their new island home from white men.

Nalla was one of the survivors. Lovely is one of Nalla’s descendants. Nalla was raped by one of the slave traders and was pregnant with his child. She used the witchcraft she learned in her childhood to place a curse on the island. White men who set foot on the island are doomed. The curse has so far been completely effective.

Developers are itching to get their hands on Dark Isle because it has a beach. Until Hurricane Leo, building a bridge to the island was impractical. The hurricane changed the topography, making it possible for Tidal Breeze, an unscrupulous real estate developer, to demand that the state pay for a bridge so it can fill the beaches with condos for rich people. Most local residents are tired of developments that displace less affluent people with wealthy condo dwellers, although a few are persuaded that development brings economic benefits that outweigh the environmental destruction that has devastated Florida.

Steven Mahon is an environmental lawyer who wants to throw a wrench in Tidal Breeze’s plan to bulldoze Dark Isle. He realizes that, as the last inhabitant of Dark Isle, Nalla may have a claim to ownership of the island through adverse possession. Proving that Nalla owns the island would be the quickest way to prevent Tidal Breze from destroying it. The problem is that Nalla has no corroborating evidence to prove that she was born on Dark Isle or that her ancestors ever lived there. The state claims ownership of all uninhabited islands near Florida and Tidal Breeze has engineered a behind-the-scenes sweetheart deal to buy it from the state.

The story follows two characters who appeared in earlier Camino Island novels. Bruce Cable owns a successful independent bookstore that caters to island residents and tourists. Mercer Mann is a novelist who spends part of the year on the island. Mercer decides that Lovely has a story worth telling. Bruce is a fan of Lovely’s self-published book about the island and is responsible for the few sales that Lovely made. He encourages Mercer to tell Lovely’s story in a work of nonfiction and to bring Tidal Breeze into the narrative.

Political corruption and environmental destruction are two of the novel’s themes, from Tidal Breeze’s attempt to influence a judge to its use of campaign contributions to assure that state officials ignore the environmental consequences of its development projects. The larger theme is Florida’s history as a slave state and the continuing impact that slavery has had on the state’s Black residents. I was particularly moved by Lovely’s testimony that she wanted to tell her story because so many stories of slaves have not been told — a truth that seems particularly evident in Florida, where a majority of the state’s legislators seem to believe that stories about white slaveowners are best forgotten.

I am hot and cold on Grisham, but I enjoyed the trial scenes in Camino Ghosts. Lovely is a fun and sympathetic character. The plot is simple but compelling. The present day story might be too upbeat to be credible, but Grisham balances the good feelings with the harrowing reality of the slave trade. My primary reason for giving Camino Ghosts a strong recommendation is that it is so different from most legal thrillers. It’s always good to read something fresh in a genre that tends to rehash stale plots.

RECOMMENDED

Still Waters by Matt Goldman

Published by Forge Books on May 21, 2024

Gabe and Liv Ahlstrom are siblings but they have not connected with each other in decades. They grew up in Minnesota, where their family made a living operating the Ahlstrom resort on Leech Lake. The resort holds bad memories, particularly concerning their mother’s death. Now they live on separate coasts.

The funeral of their brother Mack brings Gabe and Liv back to Minnesota. Mack lived in Chicago and also maintained no connection to his siblings. Despite the absence of connection, Mack emails his brother and sister from beyond the grave. He accomplished this by setting his email program to send them emails in the future, resetting the delivery dates each day until his death prevented him from accomplishing that daily task. The emails disclose his suspicion that someone is trying to kill him. The delivery of threatening notes and a dead beaver at the resort make Liv and Gabe wonder whether they might be the next victims.

Still Waters is a novel of family secrets. As Gabe and Liv try to identify Mack’s killer — assuming he was killed and didn’t die from a natural but unusual cause, as his doctor certified — they learn that their parents’ relationship might not have been as idyllic as it appeared to the younger children.

It isn’t a secret that Judith Otsby, the owner of a neighboring resort, would like to acquire the Ahlstrom resort. Another family member’s death seems to open the door to that possibility, but Liv and Gabe would have to surrender their right to take ownership for that to happen. Could Judith be the murderer? Winona, a niece of Liv and Gabe, hopes to acquire the land so she can build a small ecofriendly power plant on the premises. Would murder further her ambitions? Add a murder mystery to a Succession plot and you’ve got Still Waters.

Unfortunately, Still Waters doesn’t feature the sharp writing and wicked twists of Succession. The family drama is rooted in a pedestrian story of parental infidelity. The characters are bland. That probably shouldn’t be surprising, as the book is populated with characters in Minnesota whose goal is to “blend in and carry on as if you’re embarrassed to be alive” (by far the best line in the novel). Various love stories (Gabe and his girlfriend) and love gone bad stories (Liv and her husband) do little to spice up the plot.

The only interesting character is Judith, and she’s only interesting because she’s nasty and snarky. She treats her husband like a servant but it’s difficult to feel sympathy for him, given that he only puts up with her to benefit from her family’s wealth. It’s easy to feel sympathy for a mentally challenged character, but a weak effort to cast suspicion on him is a waste of time. No conventional writer is going to turn a sweet likeable guy with a mental disability into a killer, and Still Waters is clearly the work of a conventional writer.

On a side note, Gabe and Liv need to pull off a scheme to deceive someone they suspect of being the murderer, but the scheme requires them to track down a unique liquor bottle that hasn’t been manufactured in decades. They apparently do this in less than a day. Writers gloss over improbabilities all the time for the sake of telling a story, but this one seriously impairs the story’s credibility.

The plot drags between major events. Efforts to build suspense milk scenes for longer than is necessary, causing suspense to dissipate. Chapters finish with cliffhangers before the action resumes in the very next chapter in an apparent attempt to make the book seem like a page turner. The technique fails to rescue a dull story. The reveal is ho-hum, capped by a rambling confession that serves only to tie up loose ends. While the story might hold some interest for mystery fans who enjoy family dramas, I would put Still Waters near the bottom of a reading list for most mystery fans.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

A Rough Way to Go by Sam Garonzik

Published by Grand Central Publishing on May 21, 2024

A Rough Way to Go is a dark comedy about financial crime and murder. The comedy comes from the hapless but likable narrator, Peter Green, an unemployed househusband who spends his time surfing, hanging out at the gym or library, watching his young son, and trying to finish the endless stream of errands his wife tasks him with completing. She peppers him with constant texts asking where he is, what he’s doing, when he’ll be home.

Pete’s “future appears pointless and bleak.” At least that’s how it appears to Pete, who apparently lacks the ambition to give his future a different shape. Some of the novel’s most amusing moments come from Pete’s efforts at quiet rebellion — like not putting down the toilet seat — when he tries to show his wife that he’s the boss.

Pete and Lauren used to live in the city. Pete lost his job for reasons that are never quite clear, probably because Pete is narrating the story and wants to gloss over his many failings. He was out of work for almost two years before Luke was born. Luke is almost four now and Pete hasn’t made a diligent effort to find a new job. Nor has he been a happy househusband. Pete once pretended he had jury duty to get away from Lauren and Luke.

Lauren works in finance, as did Pete when he last had a job. She seems to view Pete as her unpaid assistant whose only reason for existing is to make her life easier. She is remarkably unsympathetic when he comes home from the hospital after surviving a beating. Being married to Pete, on the other hand, would be exasperating. The story hints at mental health issues.

When Lauren told Pete she wanted to move to a location a few hours away, a place near the ocean with a more relaxed lifestyle, Pete was ecstatic. He now devotes himself to surfing whenever the weather and his childcare duties permit. Pete often takes Luke to the beach and meets up with his buddy Frank, who earns a living as a handyman who takes care of people’s property during the offseason. They take turns watching kids while the other surfs.

Pete has occasionally chatted with another surfer, Robert Townsend. They shared a background in finance but, like most of the people Pete knows, Townsend seemed to be put off by Pete’s unemployment.

Townsend’s body is found on the beach. Pete had seen him in the late afternoon on the day he entered the water. It seemed unlikely to Pete that Townsend would have gone surfing in the late afternoon after they chatted, given the weather. Townsend supposedly drove to a different beach where he supposedly had a surfing accident that resulted in a broken neck. The facts don’t make sense to Pete, so he presses a cop he knows from the gym to investigate. The cop wants Pete to calm down, but serenity doesn’t seem to be in Pete’s nature.

The story follows Pete as he makes a nuisance of himself trying to solve Townsend’s murder, if in fact it was a murder. The police seem indifferent to, or perhaps annoyed by, his suspicions. The clues that drive him are ambiguous. He bases conclusions on partial evidence, conclusions that seem to be wrong when more facts become available. Yet his suspicions are plausible, given the coincidental pattern of deaths among partners in the finance firm that employed Townsend. The firm has a checkered history that has left some investors in ruin. Perhaps Townsend was threatening to disclose illegal conduct. Maybe he wanted a bigger cut in exchange for silence.

The police warn Pete that he’s on the wrong track and repeatedly try to persuade him to stay out of police business. Perhaps the warnings have merit, but Pete is certain he’s being followed. A thuggish man threatens his family (although no witnesses can corroborate the encounter). Another administers a very real beating (although it might have been an ordinary bar fight). Townsend’s brother encourages Pete’s investigation but, for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, the sheriff is enraged that Pete even talked to the brother. The sheriff doesn’t even like the fact that Pete went to Townsend’s funeral or visited his widow to pay his respects — or more accurately, to make inquiries in furtherance of his haphazard investigation.

In the meantime, Pete’s wife is on the verge of divorcing him. Pete begins to question his own mental health. The reader will do the same.

These seemingly random facts not only add up to a story, they furnish clues to the mystery (if there is one) of Townsend’s death. The story’s genius lies in its creation of uncertainty about whether a crime even occurred or whether Pete has fantasized a murder and criminal conspiracy from a simple surfing accident. The solution is unexpected and smart.

Sam Garonzik milks a clever plot for its comedic potential, drawing from the dark humor that underlies relationship dramas, amateur detectives, and financial shenanigans. Most of the humor comes from Pete’s obsessive personality. A Rough Way to Go tells a fun, engaging story about a likable if downtrodden protagonist who might deserve some, but not all, of the hardships he endures as tries to puzzle out the circumstances of Townsend’s death.

RECOMMENDED

Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru

Published by Knopf on May 14, 2024

Blue Ruin is, I think, about the difference between art and life. Whenever we interact with others, the is at least the possibility that life becomes a performance — and what is a performance if not art?

Two artists are at the center of Blue Ruin. The narrator is Jason Gates. He has used other names, but he’s known to most as Jay. After living in different parts of the world as he tried “to engineer a way to bump into myself,” Jay is now in America.

An artist who no longer makes art, Jay is delivering groceries during the pandemic. He survived a COVID infection but he’s fatigued and weak. He’s been living in his car because his roommates kicked him out after he got sick. He’s trying to save money so he can afford a security deposit.

Jay collapses while delivering groceries to Alice, a woman he used to date but hasn’t seen in twenty years. While Jay’s collapse is related to his health, it is triggered by his sense of shame at seeing Alice while he’s in a destitute condition. “I felt as if my spirit were being pulled from my body with tongs, stretched out on display. See me, Alice. Nothing but a ragged membrane. A dirty scrap of ectoplasm, separating nothing from nothing.”

When they were together, Jay lost Alice to Rob, the novel’s other key character. Rob and Jay were once friends. Rob continued to paint and went on to earn a good living as a working artist.

Alice takes pity on Jay and brings him to a country home where she lets him sleep in a barn loft. She must keep Jay’s presence a secret because the property owner is only allowing Rob, Alice, a gallerist named Marshal, and Marshal’s girlfriend Nicole to stay on the property.

Jay’s backstory occupies the novel’s middle pages. Jay’s initial desire to be a painter gives way to performance art. Jay and his friend Rob do a lot of drugs, but Rob manages to produce an occasional painting. They are in constant artistic competition that draws them together and pulls them apart.

Jay’s most successful concept is to lock himself in a room where an audience can watch him on video as he paints a self-portrait and then destroys the painting. Select individuals see a blurry Polaroid of the painting but nobody sees the actual creation. In his next show, Jay stares at a wall (signifying a “stand in the corner” punishment that his parents used to impose). He enjoys modest success with his performances, enough to keep him in drugs, although Alice comes from money and pays their larger expenses. She falls into his drug use but doesn’t have Jay’s stamina. Rob blames Jay (with some justification) for inflicting damage on Alice.

When Alice took up with Rob, Jay disappeared, occasionally surfacing to make a work of art, often blissfully unaware that some parts of the art world were still noticing his contributions. Jay’s disappearance was itself a work of art, or part of one, the final piece (he calls it Fugue) of a three-piece performance. Jay’s art is a product of his inability to live an unexamined life. His life “presented itself as an endless decision tree, a constant steeplechase of exhausting and difficult choices.” Through Jay, Blue Ruin examines the process of life change: “we slip from one life to another without even realizing. There are breaks, moments of transition when we leave behind not just places or times, but whole forms of existence, worlds to which we can never return.”

As the story circles back to the present, Jay’s presence in the barn becomes a source of tension. Alice’s difficult relationship with Rob and her unresolved feelings for Jay contribute to the drama. Rob would like Jay to leave, but Alice wants him to stay. Malcolm sees Jay’s reappearance as the culmination of a masterpiece (he’s particularly impressed with Rob living in his car) and hopes to monetize it, although Jay isn’t sure that what he’s been doing is a performance or that, if it is, the performance is over.

Near the end, we learn of Rob’s backstory and gain insight into his anger. His life went off course when he was working as an assistant to a successful artist who turned out to be untrustworthy. Rob feels that he (unlike Jay) has sold out, that he’s no longer making art that is true but is working for money, feeding collectors with what they want, not with something he feels the need to make. He envies Jay for never allowing money to get in the way of his artistic vision.

Threats and violence are themes in the novel, as is the question of racial division. The story is not violent, although a threat of violence emerges at the end. Rob doesn’t believe that Jay’s reappearance was coincidental and wonders if Jay is there to kill him. The George Floyd murder occurs near the novel’s end and becomes a topic of conversation — and possibly of racial tension between white Malcolm and black Nicole. Rob’s Jamaican ancestry becomes an issue when he meets Alice’s Vietnamese family in France.

The nature of art is the story’s larger theme. Jay hates the commercialism of most art, at least the art that is displayed and sold. He arguably sabotages his career on a couple of occasions because he resents the way money corrupts the purity of art.

Perhaps Jay gravitates to performance art because performances can’t be traded in a marketplace. His Fugue piece is meant as an exit from the art world, “a kind of artwork without form or function except to cross its own border, to cross out of itself and make a successful exit.” But isn’t all of life a performance? Is Jay’s life really art? The dynamic between Jay and Rob embodies the theme of art as a commodity versus art as a mirror that reflects the artist.

Additional themes include the insecurity of rich people who buy art they don’t really understand or appreciate (“they’re always terrified someone will realize they’re just wankers like the rest of us”) and the difficulty of maintaining artistic integrity — the freedom to create art that feels true — when earning a living requires the creation of art that appeals to patrons or buyers. The latter theme might be at the heart of the relationship between commercially successful Rob and impoverished Jay. Should Jay be jealous of Rob’s success? Should Rob be jealous of Jay’s freedom?

The story offers a bit of understated relationship drama in the Jay-Alice-Rob triangle. Both the drama and its resolution feel honest.

The quoted passages should make clear that Hari Kanzru’s prose is several notches above average. His story is thought provoking and his characters are carefully crafted. I don’t know much about art apart from literature, but I appreciate Kanzru’s ability to tell a meaningful story about the intersection of art and life.

RECOMMENDED

Think Twice by Harlan Coben

Published by Grand Central Publishing on May 14, 2024

When Harlan Coben writes standalone novels, the results are hit-or-miss. When he writes Myron Bolitar novels, Coben ups his game.

Bolitar was a star player in college basketball. His pro career was immediately ended by an injury. He compensated by earning a law degree and becoming a sports agent. His career has moved in varying directions, but he is again working with his best friend, the almost equally athletic Win Lockwood. Bolitar and Lockwood have a knack for getting into trouble.

Think Twice is a serial killer novel. There are way more serial killer novels than there are serial killers, but the reading public’s appetite for fictional serial killers seems insatiable. I give Coben credit for making the serial killer theme fresh and interesting in Think Twice. The novel’s serial killer avoids detection and capture by framing someone else for each of the murders. Since the killings have no obvious connection and since cops will almost always fall for a frame (it’s easier to draw seemingly obvious conclusions than to conduct a full investigation), the killer has had a successful run.

Bolitar gets involved when the police show up at his office, demanding to know the location of Greg Downing. Bolitar believes Downing was cremated after his death three years earlier, making his location difficult to pinpoint. The police nevertheless suspect that Downing has committed a series of murders. Because DNA tests suggest that Downing’s skin was found beneath the fingernails of a recently murdered supermodel, Bolitar is prompted to look into Downing’s death.

It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Downing is still alive and has married a woman named Grace. It would be a spoiler to reveal whether Downing is the serial killer the police believe him to be.

Downing was a frenemy of Bolitar, a competitor on the basketball court who made his way to the NBA, stole Bolitar’s girlfriend (Emily), and had something to do with the injury that ended Bolitar’s career. Downing disappeared to Asia before (as far as the world knows) he died.

To find Downing, Bolitar and Lockwood follow a series of clues that lead them to a gay man named Bo with whom Downing was exchanging flirtatious messages. Bo’s boyfriend was also a murder victim. Could he have been another of Downing’s victim? The body count will increase before the plot resolves.

Bolitar also connects with his biological son, who was conceived by Emily the night before she married Downing. Neither Downing nor Bolitar are models of exemplary behavior, but they are partially redeemed by their guilty consciences and attempts to atone.

Lockwood makes fun of Bolitar’s tendency to examine the moral implications of competing choices (Lockwood tends to simplify moral issues by killing the bad guys), but Bolitar is a more interesting character because he considers (or overthinks) the consequences of his actions. I appreciate the recognition of moral ambiguity that most tough guy novels lack. Bolitar tries to practice forgiveness in his relationship with Downing, for example, but are there some betrayals that do not deserve forgiveness?

The plot has multiple threads, enough to hold the reader’s attention and perhaps challenge the reader to remember details. The ending, including a final twist, is surprising. Coben ties the threads together neatly at the end, but not too neatly. Coben recognizes that full truths are rarely known and deliberately leaves a few minor questions unanswered.

As the novel moves toward its ending, the story creates palpable tension as a key character is endangered. A moving chapter near the end may change the direction of future novels. Kudos to Coben for having the courage to shake up a popular series.

RECOMMENDED