Well, Andrew Klavan co-authors one of my all-time favorite Substacks (The New Jerusalem), and I’ve listened to him on podcasts and interviews, and I knew that he was a novelist. But I wasn’t quite sure where to start with his fiction. Audible helped me by offering this entry point as part of the Plus Catalog.

This is the first in a detective series featuring Cameron Winter, a shadowy man who is both lethal and literary. He has killed people in his earlier days (military? Spy work? We’re not sure), but now he’s a university English prof. Okay, I’m in!

This book introduces us to the classically handsome (and classically read) Cameron, but it leaves a lot of unanswered questions about who he is and what haunts him from his past. He’s lethal. He’s cool under pressure. But he’s also carrying some serious emotional baggage. He has what he calls “a strange habit of mind” in which he clears his head, opens himself to empathy, and then allows all of the pieces of whatever puzzle he’s trying to solve fall into place, and they just do. This “gift/habit” is mostly a mystery.

An old friend asks Cameron for a favor. Can he help her with a murder case? Ex-military boyfriend kills girlfriend in a jealous rage and then confesses to the crime. Nothing to solve. But the facts don’t add up. Something’s off. So, Cameron starts sniffing around.

This is a short book that does a great job of balancing plot and character. You get a handful of plot twists, but there’s a wide range to the cast, and nobody feels like a cardboard cutout. I’m here for book two!