Andrew Klavan is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. He has written many mysteries, thrillers, and some very good nonfiction, as well as producing a weekly podcast on politics and culture. A Woman Underground is the fourth book in his Cameron Winter series, which just gets better and better with each installment.

Winter is a wonderfully deep and complex character – a professor of Romantic literature at a small midwestern college, he was an especially deadly counterintelligence assassin for some very dark and secret missions earlier in his life. Every novel in the series has flashbacks to Winter’s career as a deadly assassin, as he relates them to his therapist – a kindly, older woman who is very much attracted to him. Winter is incapable of maintaining any kind of relationship, because his parents, wealthy New Yorkers, had neither the time nor the inclination to care for him.

His nanny was a refugee from East Germany, and he never got over his childhood crush of her niece, Charlotte Shaefer. His unrequited love has served as an excuse to avoid any intimacy in his adult life. He is a deeply troubled man with a code of honor he tries to live by, even though he is not at all religious. Think of a Raymond Chandler character dropped into the 21st century.

A Woman Underground begins with Part 1: The Scent of Something Gone, Winter realizes that Charlotte may be trying to get in touch with him. One evening he comes home to his apartment and smells the lingering scent of her perfume in the hall. The next morning, he studies the building’s security video, and he sees a bundled up woman carrying a book. The book turns out to be a novel that is popular with right-wing extremists, and it features a heroine who is too similar to Charlotte to be a coincidence. Winter quickly tracks down the author. To avoid any spoilers, I won’t reveal any more details!

Klavan does a masterful job of balancing four(!) separate stories while keeping the reader glued to the page. First, there is the main plotline of Winter tracking down Charlotte. Then, there is a plotline involving an old mission Winter was assigned to bring back an agent who had disappeared in Turkey. When Winter is in therapy, he keeps returning to this story, even though his therapist knows he’s doing it to avoid facing what’s really causing his psychological distress. Third, there’s the plotline of the novel Charlotte was carrying when she tried to see Winter. In it, a small group of right-wingers try to decide what to do during the riots that caused so unrest and destruction in the summer of 2020. Cameron is reading this novel to try to pick up clues as to where Charlotte might be. The fourth subplot is some sexual shenanigans Winter’s colleague at the college gets himself into. Believe it or not, all four of these stories slowly come together into one.

A Woman Underground is a pivotal chapter in Cameron Winter’s development. Several things that had stunted his emotional and psychological maturity are dealt with and resolved. The path to that resolution, however, is a harrowing one. As Klavan describes him, he spends most of the book on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It is only through his therapist’s insightful and compassionate work that he is able to come out whole. By the end, it’s clear that Winter has emerged battered, but stronger and more resilient. I can’t wait to see what Andrew Klavan has in store for him. Bubbling under the surface of the various subplots is a potential global conspiracy that involves extremely powerful Americans who have been compromised. It’s enough to turn the most level-headed person into a paranoid lunatic, and the people Winter can completely trust are down to very few. Things are getting very interesting in Cameron Winter’s life!