The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder

Mr. J. G. Reeder

Reeder works quietly for the Director of Public Prosecutions, sidling into rooms and letting people underestimate him while he remembers everything. He is drawn to sensible people and unremarkable streets, and he treats detection as a private hobby rather than a public triumph. When Lord Sellington's five-thousand-pound swindle lands on his desk, Reeder already knows more about the family than the peer suspects.

Art Lomer

Lomer runs a profitable operation out of Buffalo and has brought his troupe to London at the tail end of the season, which is exactly the sort of timing Reeder notices. He is cool under pressure until a stranger in the street asks after Leoni and lifts his watch and albert without breaking stride. His pursuit of Bertie Claude Staffen's money makes him a useful lens on how the book's swindles are actually staged.

Bertie Claude Staffen

Bertie is the son of a manufacturer rich enough to buy cotton mills as a sideline and stingy enough to take the bus. His fishlike vacancy makes him the ideal mark for Art Lomer's troupe, and his father's money makes him worth the groundbait of an expensive Bloomsbury suite. He matters because he shows how the book's criminals choose their victims, and how little the victims understand what is being done to them.

Miss Margaret Belman

Miss Belman is the kind of woman Reeder likes precisely because she is sensible rather than merely pretty, and their shared journeys home turn into animated debates about the Prince of Wales and the cost of living. Through her he learns about her fellow boarder Mrs. Carlin, the deserted wife of Lord Sellington's nephew, long before the Foreign Office ever sends for him. She is the quiet hinge between Reeder's ordinary life and the Sellington affair.

Mo Liski

Liski receives Reeder with the composure of a man who has rehearsed his answers, dismissing an anonymous letter about Paris jewel sales as a cock-and-bull story. He is careful about times and weather, and Reeder's gentle agreement with details Liski has not quite stated is the tell. His neglected lodge and three thousand acres give the investigation a geography to walk, and his account of that Dover crossing refuses to sit still.

Lew Kohl

Kohl belongs to the shadow world Reeder maps through private files and old police records, the men whose watches turn up in the wrong pockets years later. He is the sort of adversary who justifies Reeder's habit of working in an office where the clock ticks and the paper rustles, rather than announcing himself. His presence raises the stakes of the Sellington swindle from a family embarrassment into something with teeth.