FIND ME NOWHERE

English professor Cameron Winter’s past as a contract killer for a shadowy government agency just won’t leave him alone as long as there are bad actors with good memories.

The Recruiter, the nameless public servant who served as Winter’s old chief and mentor, comes to him with a request that’s more like a demand. Winter needs to leave Chicago and travel to Kinnecombe, Pennsylvania, to investigate the fatal stabbing of feisty store manager Kenneth Tubman. The powers that be seem less interested in who killed Tubman than in why, and part of the reason becomes clear as soon as the victim is identified as the father of Cpl. Geoffrey Tubman, an Army sniper who was blown up in a tunnel beneath the gorge of Ibram Kalay in a high-energy prologue. Winter’s not eager to leave either Gwendolyn Lord, his girlfriend, or Margaret Whitaker, his therapist, but his first trip to Kinnecombe unearths a highly suggestive clue: Shortly before his death, Kenneth Tubman insisted to his wife, Kathleen, that he saw their late son among the spectators at a televised baseball game. If Geoff Tubman really is still alive, there are all sorts of reasons a crowd of local mobsters, government agents, blackmail victims, and highly placed politicians—groups that overlap in disconcerting ways—might have wanted him dead. And the same goes for Winter, whose every visit to Kinnecombe flushes out more powerful enemies whose days will be ruined if they don’t kill him. As usual, Klavan is less interested in tying all the subplots together with a neat bow than in creating characters who are at once memorable, engaging, and ruthless.

Don’t worry about the hero. The fade-out finds him back home, presumably to grade another batch of papers till next time.