The billionaire shipping tycoon, Constantine Demiris, is a fictional version of Aristotle Onassis. Sheldon enjoys presenting men like Demiris, whose mere presence seems overwhelming. He is given no redeeming features and is pure malice. He can be frighteningly vindictive, the most subtle avenger in the novel which features several people for whom revenge is a prime motive. Demiris destroys many innocent people.

The two young women Catherine Alexander and Noelle Page are not well developed. The first is almost as vulnerably naive at the end of the book as she was at the beginning, even though she should have learned something from her association with men in power, first as an assistant to a key political figure in Washington, D.C., and later after associating with Demiris. The second is the daughter of a Marseille fish seller who sells her to a wealthy merchant who makes her his...