THE HOUSE OF LOVE AND DEATH

A former proxy assassin seems determined to work off his guilt by immersing himself in unrelated mysteries.

The job Cameron Winter did for a shadowy federal agency wasn’t to kill people but to arrange for them to be killed by someone else. After a confrontation with someone he had to shoot directly, he goes into retirement as a teacher of Romantic poetry at a university in the Chicago suburbs, where he catches a news story about the Wasserman family—psychologist Norman, community volunteer Marion, their teenage daughter, Lila, and Agnes Wilde, the live-in nanny for their 7-year-old son, Robert—all but the boy shot to death in their home in upscale Maidenvale, which was then set afire. There’s much to baffle Inspector Roland Strange and his colleagues, but the mystery that Winter finds irresistible is why the nanny, who lowered her charge from a second-story window and urged him to run away, didn’t follow him herself. Interspersed with the story of Winter’s investigation is a series of counseling sessions with therapist Margaret Whitaker in which he recounts his involvement in his last and most disturbing case, which climaxes with his memorable confession: “For the sake of the mission, I drew her into my arms.” Klavan, who’s more interested in multiplying suspenseful plotlines than in tying them neatly together, provides an incidental high point: his hero’s monologues during what must be the most revealing therapy sessions ever.

 A compelling demonstration of why a self-tormenting killer makes the perfect detective.