The Storm

Another book by Rachel Hawkins that will keep you guessing til the very end about who actually murdered the governor's rich and philandering son 40 years ago.  Lo (short for Gloria) Bailey is back in the tiny coastal town of St. Medard's Bay, Alabama, after being exiled by gossip and rumors that she was the one responsible. Even though she was found not guilty of the murder, popular opinion remained against her; but now she says that she has come back to clear her name once and for all. She is accompanied by a journalist, August, who says he wants to write her story. Geneva Corliss is the struggling owner of the Rosalie Inn, the only structure in town that has survived the periodic hurricanes that seem to seek out this otherwise out-of-the-way corner of the coast. The arrival of August and Lo promises to be a boon to the flagging business prospects of the Inn but everything turns out to be more complicated than that as Rachel learns secret after secret about her mother who is now forever silenced by Alzheimer's. 

Publishers Weekly says of this "sleek suspense novel" that "Hawkins toggles back and forth between Lo's return to St. Medard's Bay and the days leading up to Landon's death, marking each timeline with the name of a contemporaneous hurricane. She shrewdly orchestrates the plot twists in each story line, folding in letters, emails, newspaper articles, and excerpts from August's unfinished manuscript to raise new questions and ratchet up suspense. When the pieces finally click into place, readers will be more than satisfied." I personally found this structure to be disjointed and a bit off-putting as some of the reporting is not identified with an author and you have to figure out from the context who is speaking. Library Journal calls the novel "fast-paced" and "atmospheric" and indeed the weather plays a key role in both structuring the storyline and ratcheting up the suspense as chapter titles count down the days until the next hurricane is going to hit. Booklist concludes their review with this positive note: "Hawkins uses her mastery of multiple time lines and characters to great effect in this quick and enjoyable read." Similarly, Kirkus closes with "the story is gripping from beginning to end."

Camino Winds

I haven't read any John Grisham in quite a while, although I certainly enjoyed what I read in the past, as well as  the movie spinoffs I watched. However, I found this book somewhat disappointing. Fictitious Camino Island, just off the east coast of Florida is a literary haven, anchored by Bay Books and owner/mover/shaker Bruce Cable. Cable loves to cultivate and foster budding young authors and doesn't mind bedding the attractive female ones, given that he is in an open marriage. There is a handful of other authors, who write in various genres, that make Camino Island their home, and independently wealthy (although perhaps not legally so) Bruce frequently hosts literary dinner parties in partnership with his antiques dealing and beautiful wife, Noelle. Bruce also has several author events each week at the bookstore during the busy summer tourist season. But this season is different because an unpredictable hurricane, Leo by name, decides to hit Camino Island head on. After the storm has passed, Bruce, his bookstore employee Justin, and crime writer Bob Cobb--all of whom remained instead of leaving--find that one of their friends, lawyer turn thriller writer Nelson Kerr, is dead. The police department want to write it off as an accident but Bruce and his pals find clues that suggest otherwise. When the local and state police seem all too willing to write this off, Bruce is determined to find out if the last book Nelson was writing might lead to the killer of his friend. Kerr has exposed some heavy hitter bad guys before and this time they may have decided they would go to any lengths to prevent publication of the book. Publishers Weekly sums up the rest of the action nicely, to wit: "Believing the manuscript is fact posing as fiction, Bruce retains the services of a dodgy security firm to infiltrate nursing homes. This effort leads to more murders, a cover-up, and a massive FBI operation to bring the book’s villains to justice."

The resolution of the book seems anti-climactic although perhaps more realistic for all of that. But, to me, none of the characters were very engaging. This is a sequel to Camino Island and I might have liked some of them better if I had read that. Kirkus writes a generally favorable review, although noting that "Cable is perhaps Grisham’s least sympathetic hero; he drinks night and day, sleeps around, and has few apparent scruples. At least he’s not a lawyer. Neither is he a cop..." The New York Times notes this effort is a hybrid of Grisham's earlier and more serious legal thrillers with a sort of beach book.

Isaac's Storm

This is one of Erik Larson's first books and when he said at his author's talk here in Bend on June 20 (2013) that it was his wife's favorites (she is is initial editor for all his work), I was even more intrigued to read it--having already bought it in preparation for his appearance here. Personally, I did not think it superseded the other two of his which I really liked, Devil in the White City or In the Garden of Beasts (see also my post on Thunderstruck ).  He does a good job of describing the hubris of men who were the initial movers and shakers of the national weather bureau and who believed, falsely as it turns out, that they already knew a lot about how hurricanes behaved. They also had political agendas which kept them from paying attention to those who did know how hurricanes behaved, the Cubans, and therefore ignored available warnings that this was a storm to be reckoned with. A lot of people died needlessly as a result. Although Isaac Cline was the chief of the Galveston station at the time the 1900 hurricane wiped out much of the city, and Larson does rely on Cline's memoirs and scientific papers, I think the reader gets a less compelling picture of Isaac than might be expected from the title of the book. As with his other books, Larson has done his research on the meteorology,  the history of the weather bureau and relevant events and personalities-- providing extensive documentation which is all relegated to notes at the end of the book;  he writes his story with the heart of a novelist so the reader is swept along with the tide of the oncoming storm.