{"id":1710997,"date":"2022-10-25T23:03:03","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T03:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1710997"},"modified":"2022-10-25T23:03:20","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T03:03:20","slug":"a-mysterious-suicide-lures-ex-spy-and-english-professor-cameron-winter-back-into-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-mysterious-suicide-lures-ex-spy-and-english-professor-cameron-winter-back-into-action\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mysterious Suicide Lures Ex-Spy And English Professor Cameron Winter Back Into Action"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fa-mysterious-suicide-lures-ex-spy-and-english-professor-cameron-winter-back-into-action%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1710997&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A second book in a series, like the second season for a great baseball rookie, can be fraught with dangers. So much on the line. So much that could go wrong.<\/p>\n<p>But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/the-andrew-klavan-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Andrew Klavan\u2019s<\/a> sophomore season with protagonist Cameron Winter puts paid to the sophomore jinx. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1613163517?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_1&#038;storeType=ebooks&#038;qid=1666722032&#038;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A Strange Habit of Mind<\/a>\u201c doesn\u2019t just match \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1613162405?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_0&#038;storeType=ebooks&#038;qid=1666722032&#038;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">When Winter Comes<\/a>\u201d in excitement, intrigue, puzzles, and suspense \u2014 it far surpasses the first one. <\/p>\n<p>Perhaps because it hits right at the current political and cultural dangers we face. A tech billionaire for a villain, Gerald Byrne wants nothing more than to play God with the world he is remaking in his likeness with his \u2018Good World Project.\u2019<\/p>\n<p> Perhaps because of hero Cameron Winter, an English professor with a past, armed with the poetry of William Wordsworth, yet violence is at his core. Perhaps because of Nelson, the real nemesis of Winter, trained as Winter was, also violent to his core, but lacking the words of Wordsworth at his disposal. <\/p>\n<p>Perhaps because of all of these things, and more.<\/p>\n<p>Klavan\u2019s heroine is an ordinary, somewhat dumpy woman named Molly, with all the trappings of wealth and glamor, married as she is to Byrne, but at heart she\u2019s just a wife and mother \u2014 a homemaker. <\/p>\n<p>Or is the heroine Winter\u2019s therapist, Margaret, who sees Winter for who he is, long before he tells her the stories of his past:\u00a0 \u201c\u2026what disturbed her more than anything was the violence in him\u201d (15). <\/p>\n<p>The narrator tells us, \u201cWinter was a hard man at his core, harder than most people realized. His mild academic looks threw them off.\u00a0 They saw geeky sweaters and pullovers but missed the lethal control of the body underneath. They saw wire-rimmed glasses but never understood the cold eye he cast on life, on death\u201d (39). <\/p>\n<p>The reader must never be fooled by outward appearance. Later in the novel, Winter tells Margaret, \u201cBrace yourself for more of this, Margaret \u2026. We\u2019re just getting started. By the time I\u2019m done, you\u2019ll have a whole mound of severed heads in your office, each with my name on it\u201d(230).<\/p>\n<p>Violence lies at the heart of this novel \u2014 Winters\u2019s, Byrne\u2019s, and Nelson\u2019s \u2014 no matter where the plot or the people turn, whether in the classroom, the boardroom, or the bedroom. And the uncertainty of when and where the violence will certainly strike keeps the reader on the edge of her seat and the plot on the edge of a knife.<\/p>\n<p>The prose itself is knifelike: clean, precise, cutting. Klavan wastes no words, uses no unnecessary metaphors or adverbs. His language swipes at us, and we must duck to avoid injury. And, I think, this is part of the novel\u2019s suspense, that the language matches the plot. The adjective \u201clethal\u201d is not gratuitous but essential, as is his description of Winter\u2019s \u201ccold eye\u201d looking on life and death. The plot hinges in small ways and great on just those two things. Byrne holds them both in his hands, he believes, to dispense as he will.<\/p>\n<p>There is so much to admire about this story, or should I say stories. \u201cA Strange Habit of Mind\u201d tells several simultaneous stories, each of a past life. The past life of Winter. That of Byrne. That of Nelson. And their pasts consist of violent acts and actions and people. <\/p>\n<p>In the case of Winter, Klavan has chosen to make sure we know, using Italics, that Winter\u2019s story is parallel to the main story, in Roman type. Stories within stories provide a richness and sophistication to what could otherwise be just a simple, straightforward detective story, which this is not. <\/p>\n<p>There are also those passages that talk of the art and craft of making stories \u2014 of the necessity of silences, the necessity of certain words. When I read the passage about silences, I could only think of Richard Wagner and his insistence that the music was in the rests, the silences. So what, a reader must ask herself, are the silences in these stories, in Cameron Winter himself?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA Strange Habit of Mind\u201d will now turn two novels into a Cameron Winter series. And if Winter is the character he intends to write for a long time, could it be the silences in Winter are what allow this series to grow?<\/p>\n<p>For despite the revelations in this book about Winter\u2019s resourcefulness \u2014 albeit treacherous \u2014 we sense that there is far more to know about Klavan\u2019s enigmatic protagonist.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cheryl Forbes is Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She is the author of eight books on theology, philosophy, science, and memoir.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cA Strange Habit of Mind\u201d is available on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Strange-Habit-Mind-Cameron-Mystery-ebook\/dp\/B09V3KTGGJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Amazon<\/a>\u00a0and at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/a-strange-habit-of-mind-andrew-klavan\/1141123840\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Barnes &#038; Noble<\/a>. Signed<\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A second book in a series, like the second season for a great baseball rookie, can be fraught with dangers. So much on the line. So much that could go wrong. But Andrew Klavan\u2019s sophomore season with protagonist Cameron Winter puts paid to the sophomore jinx. \u201cA Strange Habit of Mind\u201c doesn\u2019t just match \u201cWhen &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1711000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1710997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1711000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}