38 pages • 1-hour read
The Trespasser
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Symbols & Motifs
Murder Squad
The Murder Squad is a group of detectives, a physical location within the Dublin police force, and the pinnacle of success within law enforcement. Its presence permeates every page of the novel. Conway sees murder detectives as the elite: “Murder are the big-game hunters; we spend our days going after the top predators” (307). The novel is riddled with enthusiastic descriptions of how the squad works, the adrenaline rush of interrogating a suspect, and the thrill of closing a case: “Even when you know trained chimps could do your job that day, the walk to the scene gets you: turns you into a gladiator walking towards the arena, a few heartbeats away from a fight that’ll make emperors chant your name” (12). The squad becomes something more than a collection of people performing a task. For Conway, being part of the Murder Squad amounts to a religious calling. Conway desperately wants to succeed among these detectives. Perhaps this is the reason she reacts with extreme paranoia at the thought of the detectives rejecting her.
Fairy Tales and Fantasies
Conway uses the term “fairy tale” contemptuously when she is referring to an outrageous story. Yet, many of the characters in the novel, Conway included, indulge in magical thinking. Conway sees herself waving a sword as she rides into battle with her evil colleagues on the squad. Eventually, she performs a much-needed reality check. For Aislinn and Rory, fairy tales represent a reality that’s much easier to bear than the world itself. When the two first meet, they bond over a book of fairy tales. From the time she was a child, Aislinn had been making up stories that featured herself and Lucy. The end of the novel reveals that Aislinn wrote a fairy tale intended as a cryptic message to Lucy, warning her of danger. During Rory’s interview, Conway condemns his fantasies:
What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don’t have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next (101).
Conway later accuses her partner, Steve, of spinning fairy-tale theories about Aislinn’s gangster connections. The novel’s ultimate fairy tale is Aislinn’s fantasy that she can seduce McCann and then drop him cold without any consequences. Aislinn was so adept at spinning fantasies that she could no longer tell the difference between a fairy tale and reality.
Projecting an Image
To achieve a hidden agenda, some of the characters in the novel project an image to manipulate the perceptions of others. O’Kelly’s office gives the impression that he’s a nice grandfatherly type: “The whole room says he’s some outdated time-server who spends the day practicing his golf swing and polishing his nameplate and working out fussy ways to tell if someone’s touched his stash bottle of single malt” (135). The effect is intended to put O’Kelly’s opponents off guard. As a senior detective, Breslin wants to come across as professional, authoritative, and charming: “[Breslin] drives a 2014 BMW and he bangs on about how his kids go to private school because he’s not having them surrounded by skangers and immigrants who can barely speak English” (115). Breslin collects status symbols in the hopes that these will help him achieve a higher rank faster.
Aislinn performs a radical image makeover to get closer to McCann. Initially, she’s described as dowdy: “That woman was still the twelve-year-old that Lucy’s describing: chubby, insecure, clothes that wouldn’t suit anyone and definitely didn’t suit her” (53). When she transforms herself, Aislinn is unconcerned with whether she likes the result. She wants to create an effect that fashion magazines define as the most desirable look: “I have to be someone who any guy in the world would think was pretty, so even if he’s not actually attracted to me, being with me will be too much of an ego-boost to resist” (343). Aislinn intends to ensnare McCann by looking like the fantasy woman of any man’s dreams.
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