And it was all long in the past. The Antterland twins, one of them murdered fifteen years ago, the other five years later, now this about Hari Harsent, nine years ago. Who knew anything about these people when they were alive, who cared now about who had killed them? They all seemed cut off from the flow of life, from family and lovers, even people who merely cared about them. Only the fact that they were murdered, and that the murders appeared to be linked, made them more interesting in death than they had been in life. Their fates survived in closed police files and confessions that were suddenly produced. Who are these people, and who were they?

The novelist in me – I could not help seeing it this way, because that is what I do, what I am – simply could not respond to these people. Mystery and crime novels are often thought to be entirely about plot, but in reality like all novels they are driven by character. People are depicted as having real lives, with complexities, worries and satisfactions that have little to do with the main story.

I knew almost nothing about Lew Antterland, beyond the fact he was murdered. He owned a baseball bat, he had a lot of money, he had a twin brother. (But what was his job? Where had the money come from? Was he in a relationship with a partner? Why had he moved from Dearth? Why was he killed?) His brother Dever was slightly more interesting: a small-time magician, and the likely killer of Lew. What would drive a skilled magician into murdering his own identical twin? How did he first become interested in magic, and why? Dever too had money, but it was buried in a secret trust fund. (Who later killed him? Where had the money come from?)

Frejah Harsent had been intriguing for a while, but the more I knew her the less I thought of her. She depicted surfaces of herself, not the deeper reality. She was involved in every one of the murders. This Jeksid: I had learned nothing about him that made me visualize him, see him as a person. For now, in his account, especially in his account, he came over as a set of actions and intentions in ways I had read a score of times in second-rate thrillers. No imaginative spark. A good editor would send any description of him back, saying that the character needed fleshing out more.

I looked back at the last page I had read: Jeksid was describing his familiarity with the effects of mutability, but reflecting that they would not be a problem on Salay. The people I had met from Dearth all seemed obsessed with this subject – perhaps they had a right to be. So maybe we who lived on Salay should be more sensitive to it?