“I have,” he told her mildly, “a strange habit of mind.”

“Oh?”

“I hear about things. Things people tell me. Stories in the news. Or I read about things online somewhere. And sometimes, I can think my way into them. Imagine my way into them, as if I’m there. And because of that, I begin to discern the causes of events when other people can’t.”

“You’re talking about…”

“Crimes mostly,” he said….

A new Andrew Klavan book is always cause for celebration. In this case, it’s a Christmas celebration. If Graham Greene had written A Christmas Carol, it might have turned out something like When Christmas Comes.

Cameron Winter claims to be, and actually is, an English professor at a midwestern University (apparently it’s in Indiana). But close examination, especially of his hands, indicates he’s something more. He used to be (and probably still is) some kind of a covert government operative. Yet he seems to have freedom to operate on his own.

The story of When Christmas Comes starts with three different narratives, their connections not initially apparent. A young military veteran in the idyllic town of Sweet Haven has confessed to murdering his wife, a school librarian who was universally loved and whom he adored. Cameron Winter, in a session with a psychologist, tells a long, poignant story about his first love, a girl with whom he spent many Christmases in the past. But her family had a dark history, devastating when revealed. And Cameron gets an appeal from a former lover, now married and a lawyer. She’s defending the accused veteran; she knows she can’t get an acquittal, but can Winter discover anything that might give the judge grounds for showing mercy?

As Winter pokes into the lives of the veteran and his victim, he uncovers more secrets. Dangerous ones. If he makes the wrong decisions, he may ruin lives and get people killed.

I loved this book. Wished it were twice as long. Nobody is better than Klavan at delivering, not only a riveting story, but living, breathing characters with palpable inner lives, all packed up in a bed of crystalline prose.

You should read this book. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I pray Cameron Winter will return for another story.