Cover image of "Camino Ghosts," a novel about an African slave burial ground

An African slave burial ground and an ancient curse. A ruthless property developer bent on building a casino. And a gaggle of published writers gathered around a popular independent bookstore. These are among the elements in Camino Ghosts, John Grisham’s fiftieth novel and the third set on the fictional Camino Island off the Florida coast. It’s got everything we’ve come to expect from Grisham, and more. Compelling, three-dimensional characters. A complex plot filled with legal shenanigans. Fluid, fast-moving prose. And now a fascinating historical backstory stretching back two centuries into Florida’s past. This is Grisham at his best.

Familiar characters and a grave threat to the island’s peace

Camino Ghosts features all the characters familiar to readers of the two novels that precede it in this series.

  • Bruce Cable, the enterprising owner of Bay Books, which is a magnet for writers throughout the Southeast.
  • The novelist Mercer Mann, who teaches writing at the University of Mississippi but summers on the island. Her wedding takes place as the story opens.
  • “Myra and Leigh, the grandes dames of the island’s literary mafia, [who] had been together for decades and were living off royalties.”

But Grisham introduces two engaging new characters, Lovely Jackson and Steven Mahon. And they’re central to the action that ensues when a grave threat surfaces to the island’s peace.

Camino Ghosts (Camino Island #3) by John Grisham (2024) 304 pages ★★★★★

Photo of two offshore Florida islands with one to the right uninhabited like the scene of the African slave burial ground in this novel
Might this offshore Florida island look like Camino Island, and the smaller one to the right the Dark Isle of the novel? We can’t know what was in John Grisham’s mind. But the scene can’t be far from what he imagines. Image: 365 Atlanta Traveler

Two converging subplots

Two subplots converge as the pace picks up. Mercer is casting about for an idea for a new novel and getting nowhere. Then Bruce tells her, “I have the story, Mercer. Maybe the best I’ve ever heard.” A nearby barrier island called Dark Isle had been the home for two centuries of escaped slaves, who had fought off every attempt to recapture them. Now, more than two hundred years of the island’s inhabitants lie buried there, protected by an ancient African curse. The last living survivor, an eighty-year-old woman named Lovely Jackson, had published the story of her grandmother’s life on Dark Isle through a vanity press.

Lovely Jackson’s story

The memoir is the story of Lovely’s grandmother, her capture and enslavement in Kongo, transport to Georgia, and escape to Dark Isle. And when Mercer reads the book at Bruce’s urging, she knows she’s got a surefire bestseller on her hands. All she has to do is to convince the old woman to allow her to retell her story. And that, it turns out, is a very tall order.

A multibillion-dollar plan for Dark Isle

Meanwhile, a rapacious land development company called Tidal Breeze has set its sights on Dark Isle. It’s spreading a fortune around Jacksonville, the capital, lobbying the legislature to appropriate the funds to build a bridge from the mainland to the island. And once that’s done the company will be free to erect a string of hotels, resorts, and a casino on Dark Isle. It’s a multibillion-dollar project that will flood the region with unwanted visitors.

These two subplots eventually converge in a lawsuit a nationally famous environmental lawyer files on behalf of Lovely Jackson. Of course, given this is a John Grisham story, the case will end up in a colorful and engaging drama in a courtroom. And in that setting Grisham the storyteller has few peers.

About the author

Photo of John Grisham, author of this novel about an African slave burial ground
John Grisham. Image: Ryan Pfluger – Esquire

John Grisham’s author website notes, none too modestly, that he “is the author of fifty consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages.” After further self-advertisement, the website adds, “When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system. John lives on a farm in central Virginia.”

Grisham was born in 1955. He is a former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. Wikipedia reveals that he graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practiced criminal law for about a decade.” Grisham is married and has two children.

Previously, among many other John Grisham books I’ve read, I reviewed the two preceding novels in this series:

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