A Woman Underground is a pretty interesting mystery novel by Andrew Klavan and is the fourth installment of his Cameron Winter series.

Cameron Winter is a university professor, who has a past as a dangerous government operative. He also has a peculiar tendency to get involved in the investigation of unusual crimes. He is not exactly psychic, but he has a gift of imagining how something actually occurred when it seems to baffle others who look into these misdeeds. Winter calls this tendency “a strange habit of mind”.

Winter has been seeing a therapist for a while due to overwhelming loneliness and guilt over some of what he had to do for the service of his country. He is one of the most dangerous men on the planet and also one of the most sensitive.

Winter starts to unravel a bit more when he believes that the first woman he ever loved tried to reach out to him because she was in danger. He comes across a book seems to spell out what her life may have been like in recent years. In the meantime, Winter is trying to convince a colleague to not leave his wife over some fantasy involving a hot student. During his therapy sessions, Winter discusses a previous mission to Turkey that went sideways in all kinds of ways including betrayal and very troubling revelations about those for whom he worked.

Winter has been a tortured soul since his first appearance, but he is even more troubled than usual, which is a state of mind that could get him killed as he searches for the lost woman who meant the most to him.

Klavan is a pretty thoughtful and talented writer who weaves his story through events of the character’s past. There is a pretty established pattern on how this Winter novels unfold, but the main plots are usually quite intriguing.

There are times when Klavan’s exposition seems to slow down the action a bit more than I would prefer, however it didn’t discourage me all that much.

There are some interesting twists in the story that I did not predict. Winter’s strange habit of mind got directed to a crisis that I wasn’t expecting, which was pleasantly jarring. He’s probably going to remain a pretty melancholic guy for some time in the series, but it was a bit troubling to read about his near complete mental unraveling. I did give a mental cheer when some of his usual sharpness started returning.

Klavan accomplished his goal, at least with me, in that I am most interested in where the next installment will take this complicated, curious professor with his strange habit of mind.

Next up, I will check in with the detectives of the 87th Precinct in Ed McBain’s Kiss.