Characters
- Amy Cahill and Dan Cahill are the series' protagonists. Grandchildren of Grace Cahill, they became orphans when their parents died in a fire seven years before the events of the first novel. Since then, they have been in the care of their great-aunt Beatrice, before traveling to find the 39 Clues. They both have jade-green eyes, but Amy has reddish-brown hair, while Dan's is a dark blonde; Dan likes to joke around, while Amy is more introverted. However, the cutthroat atmosphere of the hunt causes Dan to become more cynical, a development that plays a larger role in Cahills vs. Vespers. At first, the siblings do not know to which branch they belong. The Viper's Nest reveals that Amy and Dan are part of an unknown fifth branch, the Madrigals, who aim to unite the Cahill family.
- Grace Cahill is the Cahill matriarch, Amy's and Dan's grandmother, and leader of the Madrigal branch. She has traveled all over the world and settled in Attleboro, Massachusetts. The Maze of Bones begins with her death and her last minute change to her will.
- Nellie Gomez is the Cahills' au pair. Of Mexican and French descent, she can fly a plane, drive many types of cars, and speak over ten languages. She unknowingly helps Amy and Dan in the hunt for the 39 Clues, but she later decides to help the children.
- William McIntyre is Grace Cahill's mysterious lawyer, advisor, and "closest confidant for half of her life." In the first book, he advises Cahill siblings to "trust no one" and "beware the Madrigals." He helps an ominous character, the Man In Black, who follows the Cahills on the hunt and whom Storm Warning reveals is Fiske Cahill, Amy and Dan's great-uncle. Luna Amato, who is part of a group that oppose the Cahills called the Vespers, kills McIntyre in A King's Ransom.
Read more about this topic: The 39 Clues
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)