A young, attractive female undergrad, known to have several professors as sexual conquests, goes missing. An unresolved, troubling love from the past pays a secretive visit. A self-published novel’s plot mirrors the anarchists’ activities during a period of destruction and riots in America’s cities, also providing clues about that same secretive woman’s fate. This is the fourth novel in Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter series. Find the first three books reviewed here https://www.margueritereads.com/home/the-cameron-winter-mystery-series-by-andrew-klavan .

The novel is similarly structured with visits to Winter’s psychotherapist Margaret Whitaker bookending the action scenes, as Winter reviews security videotapes at his apartment to confirm that childhood sweetheart Charlotte has attempted to visit his home, carrying the novel “Treachery in the Night”. Winter read and discovers that the novel is a romanticized version of Charlotte and the imposing, aggressive man who murders her abusive lover, liberating her from the anarchists’ farm hideaway. As this mystery is developing, Winter is decompensating, referring to a psychological progress of mental breakdown, resulting in poor emotional and mental functioning. Whitaker relates that this is a dangerous time for Winter to engage in the physical confrontations she has known his investigations to lead to— Winter tends to ignore her advice at his peril.

At the same time, Winter is relating yet another story from his past life as a government agent, one in which he is tasked to retrieve a fellow agent held in Turkey, only to discover that many important US government leaders are held under the blackmail grip of bad overseas actors after engaging in video-recorded sexual sessions with underage boys and girls, akin to the Epstein scandal. What has brought the abuse of innocents to Winter’s mind, at this time of Charlotte’s reappearance? It is obvious that a confrontation with Charlotte and her hold on his past, his present, and his hopes for love and marriage in his future are necessary. Will Winter’s “strange habit of mind” enable him to read between the lines to find the truth, liberating his mind and emotions to trust and love once more? Or will the decompensating of society, mirrored by Winter’s breakdown, prevent healthy relationships in his future? Enjoy the next installation in Klavan’s development of this character and this series.