Characters
Alex Cross: An African-American forensic psychologist as well as a detective, described as good-looking and well-built. He is often referred to as "Doctor Detective." Despite being very dedicated to his job, he manages to be a devoted father to his two children. His wife, Maria, was killed in a shooting before the novel begins and he is romantically involved with Jezzie Flannagan before he finds out her role in Maggie Rose's disappearance.
Jezzie Flannagan: Before the kidnapping of Maggie Rose and Michael Goldberg, she held an esteemed position in the Secret Service—the first woman ever to hold the position. She is described as very beautiful, though she confides in Alex that she wishes she'd been born plain so she wouldn't have to face as much sexism in her workplace. As a white woman romantically involved with Alex, (an African-American man), she faces racism, though she handles it better than Alex does. Both her parents were alcoholics, and her father committed suicide. She names them as "smart failures," or brilliant people who never made anything of their lives. When Alex confronts her about her betrayal, she admits that she approached him at first strictly to get information on what the cops knew, but that she later fell in love with him and his children.
Gary Murphy/Soneji: As a boy, he was physically and sexually abused by his father and stepmother, which caused him to develop a split personality. Gary Murphy is a normal, all-American father and husband, while Gary Soneji is a cold-blooded predator who fantasizes about kidnapping and burying a baby alive at twelve and orchestrates the kidnapping of Maggie Rose and Michael Goldberg. He has an obsession with being famous, and wants to be the most feared criminal in America.
Read more about this topic: Along Came A Spider
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)