The Likeness

Frank Mackey is the hard-nosed, seasoned Murder squad detective leading the Operation Mirror investigation. Frank serves as Cassie’s superior and a significant part of her past. Together they created the persona of Lexie Madison, Cassie’s undercover identity. Cassie has put aside her undercover work to recuperate from her last mission, but Frank pushes her back under to fulfill his daring scheme to catch a murderer. Frank is Cassie’s foil in many ways. He conducts his police work unemotionally and often makes decisions that confound Cassie. “This is one of the things about fighting with Frank: he moves the goalposts faster than you can catch up, you keep losing track of what you were originally arguing about” (283). The reader can sense an undercurrent of tension between the two characters from the beginning, as Frank subsumes Cassie’s time and attention before she leaves for Whitethorn. Sam’s presence in Cassie’s life is threatening to Frank, and he worries her relationship has changed her. When he first met her, she was unattached and easily left behind her old life. It will be harder for to leave now that Sam is a part of her story.

Frank’s often overbearing rule conflicts with Cassie’s independent spirit. She wants to prove to Frank and herself she can successfully go undercover again and solve the case. Frank becomes one of Cassie’s few tethers to the real world while living at Whitethorn, and he recognizes when the mission has gone too far. Through their nightly conversations, Frank reveals he is keenly aware of her disobedience, but he allows her to continue. Frank’s motives for sending Cassie on a mission so soon after Vestal are questionable, but in the end, he proves his loyalty to her by returning the mic recordings from the investigation to her. By protecting her from herself, Frank leaves open the possibility she can return to the Murder squad.

Daniel March is the erudite rakish leader of the exclusive friend group residing at Whitethorn House. He abhors capitalism and rejects the assertion a person must secure a job and a marriage to lead a fulfilled life. Having lost his family, he sets out to create his own: “In all my life, these are the only four people I have ever loved’” (356). Daniel’s desire to carve out a utopia in the Irish countryside is a noble pursuit. His pious polemics on the pursuit of wealth and the evils of patriarchal systems ring false when he is doing little to improve the community in which he lives. Restoring the grandeur of a crumbling manor house will not fix all the ills of the world. What he fails to realize is total isolation from society can have negative repercussions on individuals. Furthermore, his “no pasts” rule forces his friends to deny their community and their personal histories. When his friends begin to rebel against his sacred rules, their unity disintegrates.

Daniel represents a tragic hero whose flaw is his pride and idealism. The author never reveals how Lexie died, but Daniel carries the full truth with him to the grave. He offers himself as one last sacrifice to save Whitethorn. His death is needless but a noble effort to protect Justin, who Cassie determines actually stabbed Lexie. Daniel’s character shows the importance of living in community with an outward focus as opposed to detached seclusion. There is no harm in nonconformity, but there is far more value in harnessing the counter-cultural spirit for the good of all mankind.

Lexie Madison is both Cassie’s undercover persona and the acquired identity of the murder victim. Symbolically Cassie uses the idea of her imaginary sister to help complete the guise and finds she slips into the character seamlessly for her first mission. Cassie no longer uses this identity since her last undercover assignment went sideways and left her injured and suffering from PTSD. When Cassie finds herself sidelined from undercover work while she recovers, Lexie Madison is reborn as a pregnant stabbing victim, who not only has the name of Cassie’s undercover persona but also looks just like her. Cassie accepts the chance to become her alter ego again to investigate the woman’s murder, but she finds inhabiting the persona of a real person far more difficult than one she created. The idea of Lexie comes to symbolize a past Cassie can never regain.

As the narrative progresses, Cassie learns Lexie was once May-Ruth and possibly a hundred other names, but first she was Grace. In her exploration of the murder victim, Cassie finds a courageous young woman filled with wanderlust whose only fear was settling into the mundane. The only problem is she left a trail of heartbreak and grief in her wake. When she dared to deceive the Whitethorn friends and break their circle of trust, she finally met her end. “[S]he ripped them off emotionally. That’s a dangerous thing to do” (381). Lexie teaches Cassie about the dangers of living a double life. Grace teaches her that leaving whenever circumstances get hard is not a fulfilling way to live.