When Christmas Comes, Book One

We meet our protagonist, English professor Cameron Winter, in a psychotherapist’s office, where he is narrating a story from his childhood of a Christmas spent with his nanny and her family. Winter suffers from a persistent melancholy that he suspects has deeper roots in his wealthy yet emotionally neglected childhood, and shady, violent adulthood. Klavan does a great job of creating an ominous mood around Winter, such that the reader does not entirely know for sure if this man is good, evil, or to be trusted, only revealing his troubled character in a slow, captivating manner. We come to learn that he formerly worked as a secret government operative, engaged in violent, deadly missions. While working as a college English professor, he uses an intuitive “strange habit of mind” to solve cold cases or other crimes that stump traditional police investigations.

Winter is reunited with former lover Victoria Nowak, who is part of the team trying to mount a defense, or at least lessen the sentence of Travis Blake, former Army Ranger accused of killing his lover Jennifer Dean, a crime of passion. Something about Blake’s full confession bothers Nowak, the circumstances surrounding the case feel off, and she is certain there is something else at play. Winter interviews the various people involved in the couple’s lives, and teases apart the true circumstances. Klavan is masterful at painting moods and rendering characters: the town of Sweet Haven, and its almost perfect Christmas feeling, the characters of Travis Blake and Jennifer Dean, and the most important sessions with therapist Margaret Whitaker, whose therapeutic process is complementary to Winter’s own thought process.

Cameron Winter is like two other fictional sleuths, Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, and P.D. James’ Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. I even see similarities with Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallender. Each are intensely private, deep thinkers who appreciate poetry and literature. Each have experienced significant loss, either in childhood or adulthood, and carry emotional burdens, a woundedness. Finally, each possess a certain masculine magnetism, yet are self-aware and have high codes of conduct that would never allow them to take advantage of the vulnerable. I am eager to continue this trilogy, and see how Klavan develops this character.

A Strange Habit of Mind, Book Two

English professor and former military operative Cameron Winter receives an ominous text from a former student Adam Kemp, the cryptic message, “Help me.” Despite Winter’s attempts to call repeatedly, he cannot get through to the young man. Dean of Student Relations Lori Lesser contacts Winter to deliver the sad news that the student threw himself off a building. As Winter investigates what happened to Kemp to result in this tragic end, the facts lead to tech billionaire Gerald Byrne, social media mogul, tech titan, and founder of the Good World Project, a worldwide project that influences governments to steer tax dollars toward efforts he favors to save mankind. As Winter learns more about Byrne’s tragic childhood, adult drug use, and decadent sexual past, he sees some commonalities between Byrne and himself that make him uneasy. Winter must own his jealousy at learning about his wife Molly, a “nobody from nowhere,” humble, good hearted, joyful woman, wife, mother of Byrne’s children, and head of his Fairy Tale Fund, which funds an assortment of initiatives for children in need.

Winter continues his therapy with Margaret Whitaker, diving deeper into his career at “the Division,” a group of agents trained to eliminate bad actors on the world stage for the U.S. government. He continues to work out his guilt over the harrowing deeds he engaged in at that time. Winter also laments his unresolved first love, Charlotte, granddaughter of his nanny, who serves as his inner beacon of feminine perfection, and stymies any effort to form a healthy potential for a life partner. As Winter unravels the mystery of the string of evil deeds performed by Byrne’s henchman, all in service to his insatiable need to control the world, Winter feels his hand has been forced and he must use his former network and skills to eliminate this threat to freedom.

Of course, spoiler alert, Winter succeeds in saving us from this power-hungry megalomaniac. His wise therapist uses the opportunity to subtly demonstrate that Byrne, and Winter, in their search for feminine perfection, must forge a true relationship with real women, and hope that they have selected someone who possesses some of the ineffable qualities they seek, to make peace with the tragic childhood loss of maternal love they both suffered. It’s tough to see how much you have in common with a real bad guy. Winter learns the lesson, continues to put his life back together, and we await his next challenge.

Klavan writes of a fallen world, fall of civilization. Lori Lesser exemplifies part of what is wrong with universities, attacking any man who might be inappropriate with a female as a potential rapist, using male power to overwhelm a female, not sharing responsibility between the parties. His choice of Gerald Byrne hints at the power elite, limited few who try to dictate the fate of humanity, confuse and conceal their aims from the populace, direct people like cattle to whatever their dictates might be. Winter is a man without faith in God, but sees the potential—he just cannot be hypocritical and express belief until he has belief. The reader can feel his wish to believe, as he encounters people he respects and their belief. He makes choices of a person who behaves as though it were true, awaiting the day when he can own that truth. He perceives himself as an antiquated man, a person whose morals and values are of a bygone time, not of the present fallen world.

The House of Love and Death, Book Three

This is the third, but I suspect not the last, of Klavan’s Cameron Winter books. As Winter’s therapy with Margaret Whitaker is making good progress, Winter drags himself into yet another murder mystery, where an entire family, save the youngest child is sequentially shot in the early hours of the morning, then the entire home is doused with gasoline and set afire. This shocking murder is set in the town of Maidenvale (intentionally sounding pure and innocent?) a town corrupted by the illegal drug trade brought in by illegal Mexican immigrants on the so called “Homeland Highway,” aided by a local corrupt police investigator. A local legal immigrant family, trying to help their children advance in the U.S., are victimized and greatly harmed by both the drug trade, as well as local home-grown perversion. Klavan is masterful at spinning many threads in his web, with no real red herrings. Every person involved, while not guilty, play some pivotal, chance role in the advancement of the tragic events. When one reflects on tragic events, tracing the threads backward, one is left wondering if only one of those people reacted differently, took a different course of action, could the tragedy have been avoided?

Klavan introduces one or more forms of societal evil influence in each of the Winter novels. Illegal drugs, violent pornography, government sanctioned illegal immigration, police corruption, and organized crime syndicates—all these influences degrade, erode, poison, and harm our daily lives, putting all of us, but especially our next generation in harm’s way. Another related theme is our society’s movement away from mannerly behavior and traditional roles of men and women. Klavan does not just mean the superficial aspects and mores, but the deeper identification of boys and girls, men and women, with noble, clear attitudes and behavior around gender roles. He hints at this in the recent novel, as the deceased teen daughter struggled with gender, until she fell in love with a boy. I’m sure he will continue to address the ways this diminishes our communities, families, and love relationships, in future novels. Winter serves as his exemplar of noble manhood, hoping to meet a woman of authentic substance.

Winter is finally confronted by his therapist regarding his insistence on inserting himself in these dangerous situations. While he manages to use his unusual abilities to bring justice where it seemed unlikely and hopeless, it also serves to prevent him from initiating and focusing on a true romantic connection, a relationship that could bring love and a happy future to his cold, lonely life. Now that Whitaker has brought this point home, Winter cannot ignore or brush aside this truth. How will this knowledge impact his next investigation? I eagerly await the next of Winter’s minacious investigations.