An Inside Job

Luigi is a round, secondary character who is one of Gabriel’s allies and a key figure in the novel’s plot. He is a symbolic character, representing the best aspects of the Catholic church and the good it is capable of doing. Luigi was once a simple priest who believed in the Christian ideals of ministering to the poor. After being elected pope, he sought to change the tradition-bound church and root out corruption. While popular with the public, he meets resistance from members within who like the power and wealth accorded them by the status quo. 

Luigi realizes that he must tread carefully to avoid tearing the church apart, but he also refuses to tolerate greed and corruption within the Vatican. This makes him a target for possible assassination, but he fearlessly refuses to hide from his enemies. This foreshadows the Camorra’s assassination attempt and provides a buildup to the plot’s climax. At the end of the novel, Luigi survives an assassination attempt and ousts Bertoli, who is the Camorra’s analog in the church. His arc is one that is left open at the end of the novel, and the narrative suggests that Luigi will continue his crusade to weed out the worst abuses within his church.

Bertoli is the novel’s antagonist and a character foil to Luigi. He is the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and is entrusted with handling the church’s finances. He abuses this office by getting involved with members of the Camorra to increase his personal wealth while defrauding the church’s bank accounts. He represents the crime and corruption Luigi is trying to weed out of the Catholic church. In this way, he symbolizes all the prelates who joined the high ranks for the church for wealth and power rather than out of religious devotion. When Bertoli is himself shortchanged by his underworld financial advisors, he catalyzes the plot by stealing the lost Leonardo from the Vatican. 

While the cardinal doesn’t commit murder himself, he turns a blind eye when murders are committed with his consent. He is indirectly responsible for the deaths of Penny Radcliff, Montefiore, and Ottavio. When Luigi threatens to expose him, he also has the Camorra arrange the assassination of the pope and Gabriel. Bertoli does not get away with his crimes, but he is not arrested either. When the story ends, he is fired from his Vatican post and banished to a secluded abbey in the mountains. This shows the church’s priority of Preserving Reputation at All Costs. Luigi calculates that treating Bertoli like a common criminal could potentially damage the church and erode public confidence. Though he remains free, he is cut off from the power and influence he craves, which Luigi believes is punishment enough.

Ferrari is the no-nonsense head of the Art Squad. He is a static secondary character whose actions help advance the plot. Because he is honest, he poses a threat to organized crime. In a past novel in the series, a Camorra parcel bomb left him with two missing fingers and a prosthetic eye, which Gabriel finds particularly unnerving. Ferrari manages the Art Squad’s investigation of the lost Leonardo, but he allows Gabriel a fair amount of latitude in conducting his own investigation. Ferrari is acutely aware of the power players in Italian and Vatican politics. Therefore, he is careful to amass a mountain of evidence before making any arrests. 

Ferrari is important because his presence shows that Gabriel can’t accomplish his successful cases on his own. Even though he operates outside of the law, he needs the law’s support to carry out the arrest and sentencing of the criminals he helps to catch. Ferrari and the Art Squad serve as counterparts to Gabriel’s criminal accomplices, who are working toward the same goal but can’t collaborate with the police. Through Ferrari’s efforts, the Camorra is effectively shut down in the Campagna region, and Gabriel’s involvement in the case—and his true identity—remains hidden.

Penelope, or Penny, is an apprentice art conservator who is already dead at the beginning of the novel. It is her discovery of the lost Leonardo painting and her subsequent death that serve as the novel’s inciting incident and precipitate the chain of events leading to the exposure of Bertoli and the takedown of the Camorra. The early part of Gabriel’s investigation is focused on discovering her identity, which links her death to a much broader and more dangerous criminal plot. 

Penny’s status as an apprentice is a commentary on the novel’s theme of The Deceptive Nature of Appearances. Although she is supposed to have less expertise than the people she works for, she is the only expert in the novel who correctly identifies the painting as an authentic Leonardo. By the end of the story, she posthumously receives full credit for discovering the painting, even though that discovery costs her life.

Throughout the series, Gabriel gets help from criminals who can operate on the side of justice outside the law. His two main accomplices in this novel are hacker Ingrid Johansen and financier Martin Landesmann. They are static characters whose presence helps to characterize Gabriel as someone who gets justice by any means necessary and whose actions advance the plot.

Ingrid is a Danish thief and computer hacker who worked with Gabriel on other cases. She is brought into the story to breach the security of the Camorra’s bank and download compromising financial records. Later, she pretends to be an air flight attendant to keep an eye on Camorra operatives while they transfer the lost Leonardo to its buyer. She appears one final time in the novel as a thief who steals back the copy of the painting that was sold to a Russian oligarch.

Martin is a financier who worked with Gabriel under duress during a previous investigation. In this novel, he is called upon to analyze the financial records of the Camorra’s bank. He offers useful insights into how the bank defrauded the Vatican. At this point in his career, Martin has apparently mended his ways and is working on the right side of the law.