Published by Mysterious Press on October 15, 2024

A Woman Underground begins with a prologue, but it is the prologue to Treachery in the Night, a self-published novel that portrays white nationalists as the nation’s saviors. A character named Miranda is living with a brute named Theo before a bigger brute named Moran marches Theo into the woods and returns to claim Miranda as his prize.

Cameron Winter believes that Miranda is modeled on a girl he loved before he was old enough to understand the emotion. Winter arrives at this conclusion after recognizing the girl’s perfume outside his door and then glimpsing someone in a security video who might or might not be his old flame Charlotte. The woman is carrying a book with a partially exposed title. Winter matches the partial cover to Treachery in the Night, starts reading the book, and concludes for no obvious reason that Miranda is Charlotte. Winter rides an improbable logic train, but improbability is the norm in modern thrillers.

Winter is an English professor who formerly worked as a spy or assassin for one of those shadowy government agencies that are a thriller staple. Winter is a broken man. He meets regularly with Margaret Whitaker, a therapist who presumably has a security clearance. She replaced a therapist who fell in love with Winter. Margaret is also in love with him, making me think that Winter must be quite the hunk — or that women just dig assassins.

Despite her feelings about Winter, Margaret wants him to make a date with a woman who asked him to ask her out. She believes his obsession with Charlotte is preventing him from moving forward with a potential relationship. Most people abandon their childhood crushes when they reach adulthood, but Winter can’t for reasons that Margeret articulates after reaching deep into her bag of packaged explanations for stupid behavior.

Winter decides he needs to track down Charlotte, so there we have a plot. The endeavor brings him into contact with white nationalists and other disreputable people. The story takes place against a vague background of riots, violent clashes between left and right in unidentified cities.

Winter’s search for Charlotte is interwoven with a story from his past involving a search for Jerry Collins, an agent who disappeared while investigating child traffickers. Jerry’s disappearance relates to his knowledge of powerful men sleeping with kids — so many powerful men that they would fill Jeffrey Epstein’s island, but men with an appetite for sex partners who are even younger than Epstein’s. Frankly, the novel’s portrayal of nearly all powerful men as child molesters defied my usual willingness to accept the unbelievable for the sake of enjoying a thriller.

The story takes an odd turn when Cameron learns that his colleague, Roger Sexton, is carrying on with a student who makes a habit of shagging faculty. Cameron is too virtuous to sleep with a student, or perhaps he’s so hung up on his teen crush that other women fail to activate his libido. In any event, Roger’s dalliance with the student becomes an increasingly bizarre component of the plot and takes center stage when the student disappears. The circumstances of her disappearance again strained the limits of my willingness to get lost in the story.

Andrew Klavan has an addiction to adverbs that requires serious treatment. His prose is competent but unpolished. The pop psychology upon which Winter’s personality is based is probably needed to explain Winter’s obsession with Charlotte, but at least he has a personality. The wannabe Nazi characters are cartoonish, although I suppose that characterization might be accurate. Most members of America’s far right are not serious people.

Apart from its credibility issues, the plot is muddy. The major components — the search for Jerry, the search for Charlotte, and the drama that arises out of Roger’s sexual involvement with a student — do not fit together well. Roger’s plot thread comes across as filler that is included to pad the word count. On the other hand, a final twist in the epilogue is satisfying. While the story will probably maintain the interest of thriller fans, I doubt that they will become invested in plot threads that, in the end, just don’t make much sense.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Enjoyed this one very much, another great suspense thriller from author Andrew Klavan. Never disappoints, highly recommend!

In the book A Woman Underground, author Andrew Klavan continues his Cameron Winter series, the retired spy-assassin turned college English professor. Winter is known for his sixth sense about crimes. He seems to be able to read a crime event and connect facts in his head like no one else. But there are unsolved mysteries in his past that are coming back to haunt him as he retells them to his therapist. And his first love, Charlotte keeps plaguing his thoughts and dreams. When a mysterious individual puts a book in his hands seemingly detailing the life of Charlotte, Winter is hooked and now going down the dark rabbit trail after her. Is he chasing ghosts? Is she still alive and in danger? This is another great addition to this thought-provoking series. I would highly recommend this book and the series. I received a copy of this ebook from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Haunted by the man he was and struggling to move forward

Cameron Winter is an unusual man. Currently an associate professor of English literature at a mid-level university, he was once a cold-blooded and highly efficient operative for a government agency known as the Division which specialized in eliminating those targeted by people in power through the manipulation of others. The son of wealthy but distant parents, he experienced little warmth or affection except from his nanny and her family, especially from his nanny’s niece Charlotte who would become his first love. Cameron has a talent which he calls a “strange habit of mind”, a sort of fugue state in which he is able to sort through different aspects of a puzzling situation in order to reach its solution, and of late has called upon that to solve a few mysteries. But he is currently in a deep depression, and even the therapist whom he has been seeing to help him process the sins of his past to allow him to move forward and lead a normal life is concerned. He is fixated on the missing Charlotte and believes that she has recently attempted to contact him, yet insists on regaling his therapist instead with a chapter from his previous line of work when he was sent to find a missing fellow operative who he discovered had had a crisis of faith and didn’t want to be found. Along the way Cameron discovers a right wing novel which he believes is a fictionalized version of Charlotte’s life in recent years, caught within an underground group and brutalized by her partner all while being pursued by another man. Meanwhile, a professor on campus who together with his wife has befriended Cameron confesses that he is having an affair with a young student with whom he has fallen in love and looks to Cameron for advise and absolution (a role for which he is in no mood). These various stories have elements in common like desire and obsession,,,,are they all really just variations on a single tale, in each of which Cameron has a role to play? Should Cameron try to find Charlotte and settle that period of his life once and for all, and if he does can he survive the encounter?
A Woman Underground is the fourth Cameron Winter mystery, and like the previous three offers the reader a highly complex protagonist in the troubled Cameron Winter. Along the way there are views offered of the strange world that is academia today, in which Cameron finds himself viewed as an oddity for his unfashionably traditional views on things, and a decidedly dim view of the world of geopolitics. The usually highly competent Cameron is off his game this time around and his skills a bit off their customary standards, which could be a sign that his mental state is worsening or that he is on the cusp of a breakthrough. As he tries to sort fact from fiction in the novel which has become his roadmap to Charlotte and works through the dark feelings left behind from his attempted rescue of his fellow operative, he has little energy left to sympathize with his colleague’s midlife crisis even as the object of that colleague’s obsession turns her charms on Cameron. Multiple puzzles needing solutions, yet the reader will see only a few quick glimpses of Cameron’s famed deductive process (my one complaint with this outing). All in all, a solid mystery with plenty of continuing character development…not my favorite in the series, but well worth the read. If you’re a fan of the earlier books, you should definitely read this installment; if you haven’t, but enjoy authors like John Gilstrap, Lee Child or Thomas Harris, then I recommend you give this book and the rest of the series a try. My thanks to NetGalley and Penzler Publishers/Mysterious Press for allowing me early access to this combination of literary mystery and psychological exploration.

A Woman Underground by Andrew Klavan is an exceptional, very highly recommended investigative mystery and the fourth novel featuring college professor and ex-spy Cameron Winter. This features an intricate and sophisticated plot where, for Winter, the past and present are at the forefront. Don't miss this one!

Cameron Winter is sharing with therapist Margaret Whitaker the troubling memories of his mission with the Division to track down Jerry Collins, a missing operative investigating a Turkish sex trafficker while avoiding discussing Gwendolyn Lord. He is also recalling memories of his first childhood love, Charlotte Shaefer, when he smells her perfume outside his apartment door and sees her visiting him on the security camera. Winter begins to track her down from clues on the camera shot of her, which leads him to a novel, Treachery in the Night, which Winter believes may be telling her story. Adding even more complexity, colleague Roger Sexton believes he loves a student, Barbara Finley, and confides to Winter he plans to leave his wife and child for her.

Winter has what he calls "a strange habit of mind." He is able to look at a situation from all angles, deduce how the complicated clues fit together, and reach a clear understanding of what actually happened. As a previously a trained operative, his extra-special understanding of human nature has been developed over time. It is a sheer pleasure in following along.

All of the various narrative in the plot are complicated, intense, compelling, and complex. A Woman Underground held my complete, rapt attention throughout. The tension increases with each page, each new development as Winter investigates and tells his story from the past mission.

Winter is a fully realized, well-developed character who will garner sympathy and compassion from readers. He is intelligent and tenacious while investigating and following what he senses is really going on. It is clear that Winter is working through the demons from his past while using his abilities to solve a current mystery. As he tells Margaret, "In my mind, it’s all one story."

Even though it is the fourth book in a series, A Woman Underground can be read as a stand-alone novel. The Cameron Winter series consists of When Christmas Comes, A Strange Habit of Mind, The House of Love and Death and A Woman Underground.

A Woman Underground is an absolutely riveting, un-put-downable mystery. Thanks to Mysterious Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.


The review will be published on Edelweiss, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Readers should be aware. This text contains explicit content, trafficking, violence, and themes of racism and supremacy. The middle of this book is messy and full of difficult subjects to read. At points, I wanted to put this book down and DNF it. I can’t stomach explicit content or topics like human trafficking. I only completed this novel so I could leave a review.

Cameron Winter, the detective operative. He wants to save Charlotte, his childhood love interest. Charlotte seems to cry for help. A gullible romantic, Winter, sets off into the wind like Don Quixote. His therapist, Margaret, is his Sancho Panza. She warns him that everything isn’t what it seems, and what do you know? She’s right. Winter must go on a journey of self-discovery. He must seek forgiveness for his past. He must fight evil racists and extremists. Maybe, he should have just called Gwendolyn. She was a nice woman he dated five months ago.

What I like the most about this story is the characters’ archetypes. I liked how well they tied into the story’s themes, the character arcs, and the plot.

My biggest criticism of the story was that the middle felt messy, and I wanted to put the book down. But I'm glad I didn't. My favorite part of the novel was the ending. It gave a satisfactory conclusion and explained the messy middle. It all comes together well in the end.

3.5 Stars Rounded up to 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I would have given this a higher rating, but I didn’t like the way the story mentioned Jesus’s name.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penzler Publishers | Mysterious Press for the advance copy of this novel. I was given this ebook in exchange for an honest review. I also won a physical advance copy on a giveaway hosted by Mysterious Press on X.

#AWomanUnderground #NetGalley

This is the fourth book in the man with a “strange habit of mind” series.
I gave it the following SCORE:
Setting: Current day, multiple locations, with flashbacks
Characters: Cameron Winter, former CIA operative, current poetry professor, and all-around talented investigator, Charlotte, his enigmatic first love, and his psychiatrist, along with an exhaustive series of bad guys, traitors, and people you would not want to meet on the streets.
Overview: Winter’s quest is to find the elusive and disturbing Charlotte, following remote clues and intriguing characters, including people from his past and those with unforeseen surprises.
Recommendation: I rate this book 3 stars, almost 4
Extras: This book has several threads in different time periods related to Winter’s talents and it becomes somewhat difficult to follow if read in multiple sittings. The previous books in the series highlighted Cameron’s “strange habit” more prominently and made those stories more interesting.
Thanx to NetGalley and Penzler Publishers/Mysterious Press for the opportunity to provide this candid review.

Winter is a powerful character. I love that he has the skills of a silent killer but is also incredibly kind but doesn't know it. Also Stan-Stan is one of my favorite characters and I am glad Winter's has Stan-Stan as a friend or at least an informit. The Winter series has been an adventure to read. I appreciate in this book that I was able to learn more about Charlotte and why Winter has strong feelings for her. I was disappointed in all the themes this story included. I found it challenging to stay focused on the big picture of the story while yet trying to understand all of the mini-stories also being written.

The author has once again created a complex story that takes the reader through multiple layers in search of the truth.