Perhaps it’s a sign of getting older that I’m less and less interested in new things. The singer topping the charts, the list of upcoming movies, that prestige TV show everyone’s talking about, whatever, has little to no appeal for me. New has lost its novelty. I’d rather listen to the music I liked right of high school, catch up on old movies, and revisit the TV shows that have stood the test of time.
Books, though, are a little different.
I haven’t read as much as I should have by now. Somehow I’ve never read a Russian novel or even some of the American classics. Last Friday I went into a library book sale and walked out with two heavy bags of easily digestible contemporary thrillers from the last twenty years and one forgotten mystery. Odds are good I’ll read them, too. Every month I get several brand new science fiction ebooks, and those really interest me.
The list of authors whose books I’ll pre-order is short, but non-existent.
Andrew Klavan is one of those authors. Fiction, nonfiction, doesn’t matter. If he’s writing it, I’ll read it as fast as I can get it. Two weeks ago I got A Woman Underground, the latest in his Cameron Winter mystery series. In the past I’ve inhaled these novels, so this time I tried to pace myself. I really did. And for the first half I did pretty well. Then Saturday I burned through the last half before lunch.
Because it’s just that good.
Where previous stories found government assassin turned English professor Cameron Winter helping innocents who didn’t even know they needed his help, A Woman Underground shows Winter starting an investigation for himself. When he gets a sense that Charlotte, his own personal Beatrice, his feminine ideal that got away, is in trouble, he goes in search of her. What starts with a whiff of perfume in a hallway ends with fistfight in the woods and an opponent who is way out of Winter’s weight class.
But it’s the emotional journey that almost breaks him.
Klavan manages to weave together an intricate tapestry of plot threads, skilling looping in university scandals, more of Winter’s clandestine past, and Charlotte’s biography. The result is a novel that moves fast, even without a series of action setpieces. What ties it all together is a subtle commentary on what it means to live in reality in this particular moment, with all its ugly politicking, yet Klavan does it in a timeless way.
People will still be reading this fifty years from now.
The lies of political ideology will always be with us, and truth will never cease being true.
If I’m being honest, I find the character of Cameron Winter a little too relatable. No, I’ve never been government assassin (though some have wondered). But the sensitive literature lover of slight build with longish blond hair, who’s never been able to really fall in love thing hits hard. I’m not the sort of person who must see myself on the page or screen to care about the character. But when I do, man oh man. Perhaps there’s a part of me that needs to see Winter’s journey completed, so that by the time series ends we can both find the wholeness we’ve been searching for for so long.
