Camino Island by John Grisham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thieves steal valuable manuscripts from the Princeton Library. Some of the crooks get caught, but others don’t. The loot disappears. An insurance company hires a team of investigators to track them down since it would be on the hook for hundreds of millions. They suspect Bruce Cable, a book dealer in resort town Camino Island, to be the fence and enlist an attractive young author, Mercer, to work undercover and ingratiate herself with Bruce. There’s plenty of book business gossip and hanky panky going on throughout the book. Eventually a ransom demand is made on Princeton for the return and the action starts.
This is light fluff but amusing enough to pass the time. I suspect Grisham was having fun skewering the publishing business, although most readers probably don’t share his inside knowledge or interest in that industry. Rare book collectors would probably get a kick out of it.