A Killer in the Wind
Three years ago, Dan Champion, when he was an undercover vice cop for the NYPD, broke up a child-sex slavery ring. But the case cracked Champion, and now he’s a detective in small-town, exurban New York, still wrestling with delusions about a dead child who follows him around and a beautiful woman who wasn’t real. But, in fact, the beautiful woman was real, and she turns up almost dead in Champion’s small town. Soon, two ghostly assassins try to kill him, and he must grapple with his instabilities while trying to track down the Fat Woman, the titular killer in the wind, and her assassins. The prolific Klavan (The Identity Man, 2010) spends too many pages on Champion’s inner demons and many more attempting to build a sense of apocalyptic, near-cosmic menace. But when Champion finally faces the Fat Woman, we learn that the only cosmic thing about her is her banality. That said, if readers slog through the first 200 pages, they will surely stick it out to the end. --Thomas Gaughan