Jack Bright

Jack Bright is the central character in this novel. He is eleven when his mother is murdered in 1998. For the bulk of the novel, he is fourteen. After his mother is killed and his father goes out for milk and never returns home, Jack feels as if it is his responsibility to keep his family together. Louis Bridge teaches Jack how to break into houses and steal the things that he needs to take care of his family. Jack is nicknamed Goldilocks by the police because he sleeps in a bed, usually that of a child, in each house he burglarizes.

Jack finds a knife that looks just like the one that killed his mother when he breaks into the house where Catherine and Adam While live. Jack leaves the knife on Catherine’s bedside table along with a note indicating that he could have killed her...