Look Closer

Vicky Townsend (alias Vicky Lanier) is the secondary protagonist of the novel. Like Simon, she is a morally complex character and serves as an antihero rather than a traditional heroine. Vicky has overcome a difficult and traumatic childhood. Her sister, Monica, was a beautiful and successful young woman. Vicky was more troubled and describes herself “the trashy younger sister, not nearly as pretty but with bigger boobs and a come-hither smile, who smoked cigarettes off campus with the burnouts and got kicked out of school for having sex in a library carrel” (64). She ran away from home as a teenager and turned to sex work to survive. However, she eventually found her calling working at a domestic violence shelter and was able to leave her unstable past behind through hard work and determination. Monica’s death derails her, and she nearly overdoses before she meets Simon, who helps her go to rehab. Despite all of her trauma and difficulties, Vicky is a survivor and exhibits courage and determination.

When the novel begins, Vicky has found her purpose in pursuing vengeance against Nick Caracci, the man who caused her sister’s death. Though she loves Simon, she is unable to have a normal life with him until she succeeds. Simon joins her in pursuing revenge, and the two use their intelligence to murder Lauren and Nick. After the murders, Vicky seems to have found peace. She devotes the rest of her life to her job and to helping raise her sister’s children. Simon notes that “she has a different life now, different priorities” (448). She changes from a restless, angry woman to someone who has found peace and is pursuing a real life after years of living solely for revenge.

Jane Burke is a sergeant on the Grace Village police force. She serves as the novel’s moral center, believing—in contrast to Simon and Vicky—that true justice can only come through the legal system. Though she is aware of Lauren and Christian’s crimes, she still believes they should not have been murdered and that they are entitled to due process. She is very intelligent, and Simon acknowledges that she is the best officer on the force. She is the only person who sees through Simon and Vicky’s plot and who realizes that Simon was capable of masterminding his revenge over many years.

Jane is 37 years old, and her gender and relative youth seem to be part of why the chief of police doesn’t take her theory seriously. He calls her “Janey” instead of her real name and does not view her as an equal, though he does respect her intelligence. Jane grew up in Grace Park and went to high school with Simon, though they did not know each other well. At the end of the novel, realizing that Simon will not be arrested, she confronts him and tells him that she knows what he has done.

Nicholas “Nick” Caracci (alias Christian Newsome) is one of the main antagonists of Look Closer as well as one of the novel’s narrators. He is the target of Vicky’s revenge plot as Lauren is the target of Simon’s. Nick is a con artist who makes a living by targeting wealthy women, convincing them to divorce their husbands, and then stealing their money and abandoning them. Nick performs these cons with the help of his childhood friend Gavin Finley, who handles the cyber side of things and helps Nick create fake identities online to back up his new aliases. When Nick meets Vicky, he is posing as Christian, a wealthy financial advisor.

Nick is a morally bankrupt character with few redeeming qualities and no apparent conscience. Several years before the novel begins, he used the alias David Jenner and contributed to the death of Vicky’s sister Monica by enabling her OxyContin addiction and isolating her from her family. He exhibits no regret about this or about the other women he conned. Instead, he jokes about them, bragging that he “reeled [Vicky] in like a largemouth bass” (117). He does not view his marks as real people but as targets.

Physically, Nick is very handsome. Vicky notes that he “looks like a Calvin Klein model” rather than a typical financial advisor, with blue eyes and a striking jawline (60). His looks enable him to entrap women, but his arrogance is what allows Vicky and Simon to trick him. He constantly underestimates the intelligence of others, especially women, and considers himself to be the smartest person in the room. He does not realize that Vicky has set him up until she kills him.

Lauren Betancourt (née Lemoyne) is one of the two main antagonists in the novel and a target for Simon’s revenge. The novel begins with her murder. Lauren is very beautiful and attracts the attention of men wherever she goes. She is “gorgeous, slim and shapely with a delicate, sculpted face and silky blond hair” (39). Her husband’s ex-wife sarcastically describes her as a “little Kewpie doll” (141) while Simon’s diary often compares her to Audrey Hepburn.

Lauren is aware of her good looks and uses them to seduce and manipulate. She sleeps with a teenaged Simon and his father in rapid succession, and she scams Simon’s father, Ted Dobias, out of his money even though she knows it will mean his disabled wife might end up in a nursing home. Like Christian/Nick, she does not exhibit remorse for her actions. Later in life, she has an affair with the wealthy and older Conrad Betancourt and marries him after he divorces his wife of 26 years. Simon takes his revenge by having her set up to be killed by Christian/Nick and, after her death, framing her for his father’s murder.

Theodore “Ted” Dobias is Simon’s father and Glory’s husband. Though he dies before the novel begins, he is an antagonist in Simon’s eyes, and Simon blames him for Glory’s death. Early in his life, Simon idolized Ted and believed him to be an excellent attorney, husband, and father. When he discovers his father’s affair, he realizes that his father is not who he believed he was, but instead a selfish and weak person. Though Glory loved him on his own merits, Ted believed he needed to be wealthy and powerful to be worthy of respect. Ultimately, Simon kills Ted and resolves to never be like him in any way.