Andrew Klavan has been so busy with his popular podcast “The Andrew Klavan Show” that it is a wonder he still has time to write. Thankfully, he has penned A WOMAN UNDERGROUND, the latest installment in his terrific series featuring former spy turned English professor Cameron Winter.

Winter is quite the unique protagonist. He is haunted, in some ways broken and admittedly empty inside. He will be the first to confess, as he does to his therapist, Margaret Whitaker, that his soul was given to the first and only woman he really loved. Charlotte is probably not aware of the long-term damage done to her childhood friend, but he knows in his heart that his lifelong mission is to find her. He will use all of his spy game tactics and even literary skills to do so.

"A WOMAN UNDERGROUND reads like classic noir blended with literary fiction. The end result is a smart and savvy novel that constantly surprises."

The book opens with a young woman named Miranda in a farmhouse looking out the window at her abusive husband, Theo, and his larger companion, Moran. They venture through the fields into the woods armed with guns. Miranda hears two shots and then waits as only Moran emerges.

This curious story is followed by a journey into Winter’s past as a spy when he is approached on a walk along the Potomac by his handler, the Recruiter. He has a mission for Winter that will send him to Turkey in an attempt to rescue Jerry Collins, a colleague who was last seen in the company of a notorious Turkish sex trafficker.

Readers might wonder what these two tales have to do with the novel’s present action. The story involving Miranda and the two men is a passage from a subversive underground novel, Treachery in the Night. Miranda is based on his beloved Charlotte, and Theo is her real-life husband, Eddie. The trip down memory lane taken by Winter is an anecdote that he tells his therapist as an icebreaker, a way of slowly getting into what is really on his mind. Thankfully, Klavan reveals more of both narratives as they hold answers to the mission that Winter has before him.

The only way that Winter is able to recall the title of that book is when he watches security footage of Charlotte outside his campus residence, and she is holding a copy of Treachery in the Night under her arm. He had been feeling like a character described by a William Blake poem that he had been teaching at school up until the moment he saw her. Using his literary connections, he finds a local bookstore owner he knows who can help him understand and unravel what is happening in this rare book and where the key might lie in locating Charlotte.

It starts with the bookseller taking Winter to the home of the book’s author, who uses the pen name “Ivy Swansag.” Winter finds that her place resembles the very same farmhouse she wrote about in the novel. This tells Winter that Charlotte/Miranda was there when the fictional action he read about described the very real acts that occurred. Regrettably, he also finds the author murdered and her home ransacked. It appears that the person responsible was once known as “The Phantom of the Zones” and fictionally represented as Moran. This is a story about white nationalists and those from European backgrounds who opposed them, sometimes to tragic endings.

The journey that Winter goes on to find Charlotte and fulfill what he believes is his own destiny is fraught with suspense and danger --- the least of which is that she may have other plans for him. A WOMAN UNDERGROUND reads like classic noir blended with literary fiction. The end result is a smart and savvy novel that constantly surprises.