65 pages • 2-hour read
Nobody's Fool
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Symbols & Motifs
Disguises
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The motif of disguises appears throughout the text whenever characters seek to conceal illegal or unethical behavior behind a mask of normalcy, pointing to The Difference Between Appearance and Truth. The story’s central disguise involves Anna, who pretends for years to be Victoria Belmond to conceal that the real Victoria was killed in 1999. Anna and Victoria already look similar, but Anna changes her hair color and wears glasses to heighten the resemblance. Archie Belmond initially shaved Anna’s head and used the shock of her emaciated state to support the fake kidnapping theory, which made people readily accept that Victoria came back after a decade of captivity. Sami easily sees through Anna’s Victoria disguise because of another disguise Anna employed in her past, again covering up a crime. Anna and Buzz used special effect makeup to make Anna appear dead so they could steal Sami’s money. The disguise was so shocking that it imprinted itself in Sami’s mind, allowing him to recognize Anna in a split second after more than two decades.
Sami himself uses disguises to blend in on the New York City streets while he performs what he calls “quasi-Peeping-Tom-ing” (13) for work. Sami disguises himself as an unhoused person to follow Peyton Booth to a strip club, where he surreptitiously takes pictures to blackmail the club’s patrons. Sami also disguises himself as a FedEx delivery person to hand-deliver the blackmail photos to Peyton in public. With both disguises, Sami chooses figures who move through the city relatively unquestioned, which allows him to perform his ethically questionable work without raising eyebrows. Radiant Allure also conceals their illegal enterprises by disguising themselves as a simple modelling agency, while the Schultzes sell their most vulnerable clients off to an overseas trafficking ring. Each disguise projects a superficial reality that conflicts with the unsavory truth beneath.
Private Investigation
Private investigation appears as a motif in the story to highlight The Tension Between Legal and Personal Justice, as Sami and his student assistants use extralegal means to pursue personal justice when the legal system fails them. No longer an NYPD detective, Sami must rely on citizen-level techniques in his search for answers concerning Anna, Victoria, and Tad Grayson. Without the power to compel cooperation that comes with a police badge, Sami and his students rely on the goodwill of their fellow citizens to help their efforts. For example, Sami suspects that the Belmonds’ young neighbors will relate to the story of a lost vacation lover, so he tells them the honest truth, which the girls find endearing enough to give Sami their information. The Three Dead Hots flirt with Brian Powell’s coworkers to learn about his absence, leading to the group’s discovery of Brian’s murder. In these ways, Sami and his students frequently uncover facts—and even crimes—before the police can detect them.
Sami and his students’ private investigation must frequently take circuitous routes, which forces them to be both creative and patient in their methods. The Pink Panthers expand on the FBI’s official investigation when they cross reference images of girls in Victoria’s 1999 yearbook with CCTV footage using an AI beta program, proving that Caroline Burkett followed Victoria out of the pub before she disappeared. This discovery allows Sami to confront Caroline about what she witnessed, learning information that the FBI couldn’t compel her to reveal back in 1999. The group’s techniques occasionally border on illegality; for instance, Sami secretly tracks Anna to the Belmond estate and trespasses so he can get past their security. Sami and the students also set up a schedule of surveillance on the Belmond estate without their knowledge. Despite the occasionally dubious legality of their investigation, Sami is proud that he and his students, through perseverance and resourcefulness, were able to solve what the FBI couldn’t.
Signifiers of Class and Status
References to wealth and its absence work as a motif to explain how characters move through their world. Throughout the text, Sami acknowledges either the wealth or impoverishment of certain areas to explain feelings of difference. For example, in his Lower East Side classroom, Anna’s luxurious outfit makes Sami believe Anna sought him out on purpose because it stands out as foreign in the working-class neighborhood: “Perhaps, like Tuna Himmler, she had just wandered in, seeking a little shelter from the outdoors […] But she didn’t look poor or down on her luck or any of that” (21). On the other hand, Sami frequently feels out of place in the realms of extreme wealth he traverses, and people look at him with suspicion because he doesn’t appear rich enough to exist in these spaces: “I pull my Ford Taurus up to the valet. The valet crinkles his nose and looks at my car as though it just plopped out of a dog’s backside” (62). In Coben’s New York City, anyone who crosses class lines, whether they move up or down the social hierarchy, is questioned for appearing out of place.
As his investigation progresses, Sami sees that people with wealth have more freedom of movement and more control over their circumstances. The Belmonds leverage their wealth not only to control the FBI and media circus after Victoria’s return—which allows Archie and Thomas to successfully pull of their replacement scheme with Anna—but also to control Sami. They know Sami is in a financial predicament after being fired from the NYPD, and his desperation to support his family makes the Belmonds’ $600,000 contract enticing. Sami signs the NDA and accepts Archie’s pursuit of vigilante justice against his morals because he needs the money and the access the Belmonds can give him. Sami reluctantly acknowledges that acquiring this wealth completely changes his and Molly’s attitudes: “I don’t want it to matter. I don’t want to let money change me or any of that. But I feel a lightness in my chest, and I know Molly does too” (224). With wealth, Sami can follow his leads around the world, secure interviews with previously unreachable people, and protect his family. With wealth, Sami sees that he can make his own decisions rather than being subject to the whims of others.
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