John Grisham novels are beach reads.

They fit everything defining a beach read: suspense, smart pacing, a nice blend of plot and characters.

The only thing that usually keeps a new Grisham from being a beach read is that his new books are usually released in the fall when more people are thinking about the coming Christmas holidays rather than the beach.

Not so with Grisham’s latest novel, “Camino Island,” a beach book set on a beach.

The book opens with the heist of original F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts. “The Great Gatsby” and the other handwritten works are stolen from a vault at Princeton University.

Readers next meet Bruce Cable, a young man who becomes an equally eccentric and entrepreneurial book store owner on Camino Island, off the Florida shore. Through the foundation of an inherited collection of valuable first-edition books, he creates an eclectic and successful book store.

About 60 pages into the book, Grisham introduces the main character, Mercer Mann, an author who has lost her teaching job and is three years past due on the deadline for her next novel.

Mann is approached by a woman investigating the theft of the manuscripts; a woman who believes Cable has something to do with it. The woman offers to pay Mann’s college debts and pay her $100,000 to get close to Cable.

To do so, Mann must return to Camino Island, where she spent her childhood summers with a beloved grandmother. Mann has not returned to the island in several years since the tragic death of her grandmother.

But she does so for the money, mystery and the opportunity to revive her languishing book.

Following the manuscript heist scenes, which take up the first 30 pages of “Camino Island,” the action is slow but Grisham makes up for the lack of action by populating the island with a gallery of oddball writers and characters.

Grisham also doesn’t reveal too much about Cable. Is he involved with the manuscripts? Or not? Readers have to keep reading and they certainly will.

Grisham is made for the beach and this one delivers like the Florida sun.