The Man Made of Smoke

The protagonist and one of the novel’s main point-of-view characters, Dan, is a forensic psychiatrist in his thirties who works in a prison. Dan’s first-person narrative shows that he’s bright, empathetic, and deeply intuitive, qualities that have helped him assist the police in catching at least three serial killers. However, Dan also describes himself as emotionally shut down, a result of the troubled events of his teen years. Not only does Dan blame himself for failing to help James at the service station, but he also feels remorse at misidentifying James as Robbie, thus rendering James “invisible.” To compound Dan’s feelings of guilt and loss, his mother, Maggie, left their family shortly after the service-station encounter, and Dan’s relationship with his father shattered under the strain of the changed family dynamics. Dan admits that he spent his teenage years shutting out his father and, as an adult, finds it difficult to sustain intimate relationships. His last girlfriend, Laura, left because she found Dan distant.

Dan has a protective mantra to center himself in stressful situations: “You are detached […] You are calm” (23). However, he often takes the detachment to an extreme, turning it into passivity and emotional numbness.