Anguished Declaration of Love: He gives one to Cassie over the phone after their relationship has been destroyed, to no avail.
Dark and Troubled Past: When he was twelve years old, his best friends Peter and Jamie disappeared. He was found at the scene with no memories of what had occurred.
Manchild: Though outwardly mature, his emotional growth has been deeply stunted by the traumatic loss of his friends in childhood.
Platonic Life-Partners: With Cassie Maddox. Subverted when they sleep together, which rapidly destroys their relationship, both personal and professional.
Private Eye Monologue: His narration provides the most classic example in the series.
Sanity Slippage: Working a murder case near the scene of his friends' unsolved disappearance has an alarming effect on his psyche.
Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Most of the first twelve years of his life are a blank. Throughout In the Woods he recovers his memories but remains unable to remember the circumstances surrounding Peter and Jamie's disappearance.
Becoming the Mask: A risk inherent in undercover work, one which she was well able to avoid during her time infiltrating a drug ring; by The Likeness, though, recent trauma has primed her for Sanity Slippage.
The Cassandra: And not in name only:Her suspicions about Rosalind in the first book are completely justified, but no one believes her at first.
Dark and Troubled Past: As a college student, she befriended a psychopath who turned her friends against her when she refused his advances, claiming that he had turned her down and that she had threatened to falsely report him for rape. This experience directly lead to her decision to become a detective.
Platonic Life-Partners: With Rob Ryan. Subverted when they sleep together, which rapidly destroys their relationship, both personal and professional.
"I used to have a partner," I said, "at work. Nobody you've met; he's not working this case. We were like you guys: we matched. People talked about us the way you do about twins, like we were one person—'That’s MaddoxandRyan's case, get MaddoxandRyan to do it...' If anyone had asked me, I’d have said this was it: the two of us, for the rest of our careers, we'd retire on the same day so neither of us would ever have to work with anyone else and the squad would give us one gold watch between us."
Dark and Troubled Past: Was raised in an abusive home and planned to run away with Rosie, the love of his life, but then she seemingly ditched him the night they were supposed to leave, and he ended up homeless for a while before finally becoming a cop. Then it turns out Rosie didn't dump him, she was murdered, and has been dead in the basement of the old house they used to hang out in for eighteen years. Oh, and his brother did it.
Knight Templar Parent: Nowhere more evidently than in The Secret Place; if Stephen Moran is to be believed, he'd knowingly have an innocent teenager convicted for murder in Holly's place without a second thought, even if he knew Holly to be the real killer.
Papa Wolf: When he first laid eyes on his newborn daughter, he was filled with the urge to kill someone so that she'd never have to question what he'd be willing to do for her. Time does not lessen these emotions.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: He doesn't care very much about rules or regulations and gladly ignores or bends them if it gets him the results he wants.
Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy
Protagonist: Broken Harbour/Broken Harbor
Appropriated Appellation: "Scorcher" was originally a mocking nickname, because back the police academy he used to pump his fist whenever he did something right, but he's made it his own.
Black-and-White Insanity: While he admits there can be exceptions, he generally believes that people get what they put into their lives, including murder victims who usually did something that contributed to them being killed. This is part of what fuels his decision to retire by the end of the novel, as he's unable to reconcile the fact that he broke the rules to do what he felt was right, and feels he cannot be trusted with the responsibility of being a policeman any longer.
By-the-Book Cop: Prides himself on having managed the highest solve rate in the squad while playing by the rules.
Dark and Troubled Past: His mother killed herself and tried to take his younger sister Dina with her. Not only that, but he blames himself for her death after he snapped at her for wanting him to stay with her during one of her episodes.
Family Versus Career: His wife left him after deciding that she wanted children, which he refused to have, claiming that murder detectives who become parents inevitably are unable to cope with cases that involve children. The truth is more complicated; he's afraid of being a bad parent.
Foil: To Frank Mackey in Faithful Place. Whereas Frank doesn't care about doing things by the book in order to get the results he wants, Scorcher is all about following the rules and doing things the proper way.
Heterosexual Life-Partners: Although he prefers to train rookies than to work with a partner, he sees himself starting to develop this sort of relationship with newbie detective Richie Curran in Broken Harbour. This goes up in flames once he discovers that Richie was not only hiding evidence from him in order to do what he thought was right, but that he also ended up sleeping with his sister Dina during one of her episodes.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: By the end of Broken Harbor, he finds himself doing this by forging evidence in order to make it so Jenny Spain is charged for the murders of her family and goes to prison where she can get psychological help. Because this goes so completely against his worldview, he feels he can no longer trust himself to be a cop afterwards and decides to resign once the case is over.
Stephen Moran
Protagonist: The Secret Place
Good Cop/Bad Cop: Usually plays the good cop to Conway's "scary bitch" interview persona.
Nice Guy: Probably the least troubled of the protagonists. He also works this trait in interviews, his partner repeatedly noting how likeable he is.
Obfuscating Stupidity: His inner-city Dublin accent often leads people to assume he's stupid, and he's happy to let them.
Antoinette Conway
Protagonist: The Trespasser
Ambiguously Brown: Due to her father being a Disappeared Dad and her mother being a chronic liar about his identity. She's probably half-Arab, but it's uncertain, and she doesn't care about her father enough to actually hunt him down and ask.
Good Cop/Bad Cop: Usually bad cop in any equation involving her partner, but will play nice on her own or with another detective.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's abrasive and aggressive, but this is mainly because of constant harassment from some old boys' club types, and she really does care deep down. (After the ringleader is finally fired, it's implied she'll mellow out a little.)
The Lad-ette: Not actually, but this is one of her interview personas, the "cool girl" who's like one of the guys. She finds it gets male interview subjects to open up to her.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: By her own book, the racist/sexist harassment in Murder has escalated to the point she's considering quitting the force and taking a job as a bodyguard for rich women. (She almost does it, except 1) she realizes Stephen has been backing her the whole way, and 2) it turns out there was only one major offender, not almost everyone else like she thought.)
Twofer Token Minority: Invoked; her nastier coworkers joke behind her back (but not far enough behind that she can't hear them), that she only got onto the squad because she fills multiple quotas as a biracial woman.
Unreliable Narrator: Throughout most of her novel, she continually states that the whole Murder Squad is forcing her out. They're not. Her level of paranoia leads her to even mistrust Sam O'Neill, which clues in readers of earlier books that she may be wrong.
You, Get Me Coffee: In one of her first interactions with Stephen Moran in The Secret Place, she sends him into a coffee shop. He's fine with this, less so when she dislikes it and asks him to throw it out five seconds later. (This is a Secret Test of Character, as, given the behavior of some of her male coworkers, she wants to know if he'll balk at a woman giving him orders before anything important happens.)
