Main Characters
- Chevette Washington, a bike messenger with a rough past and uncertain future; she was abused as a child by her mother's boyfriend. At one point she was imprisoned, but escaped and was able to find a job as a courier.
- Berry Rydell, a private security officer who has drifted from one job to another ever since his killing of a suspect and subsequent lawsuit by the man's family cost him his job as a police officer.
- Lucius Warbaby, a bounty hunter hired to retrieve the stolen glasses by the corporation that made them. He in turn hires Rydell to assist him in finding the person who stole them. Due to a recent rollerblading injury, he requires a cane to walk.
- Freddie, Warbaby's assistant. He has a fondness for loud, bright-colored print shirts, and carries a laptop with him wherever he goes.
- Loveless, an agent sent by the company that made the glasses to retrieve them and kill whoever stole them. His most distinguishing features are his four gold canine teeth, visible at the corners of his mouth whenever he smiles.
- Sublett, one of Rydell's fellow security guards. He is an albino with severe chemical allergies, and is a member of a Christian religious sect that views certain movies and television shows as a new form of gospel.
- Sammy Sal Dupree, Chevette's friend who set her up with her courier job at Allied and tries to convince her to get rid of the glasses. He is presumed to be killed by Loveless halfway through the story, but it is revealed near the end that he survived.
- Skinner, an old man that Chevette lives with. She helps him around the house, and together they also sell odds and ends to people for extra money.
- Shinya Yamazaki, a Japanese national who describes himself as an "existential sociologist", currently studying the inhabitants of The Bridge.
- Svobodov and Orlovsky, corrupt San Francisco cops who pursue Chevette in an attempt to obtain the glasses.
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Famous quotes containing the words main and/or characters:
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.”
—Clifford Irving (b. 1930)