“When she turns around, the fog has closed in upon itself, iced over, smooth and still as a mirror, as though the cab and its driver had never been there at all.”

The city of San Francisco with all its various aspects is part of the novel in that it creates an ominous and mysterious mood. This first example describing the city’s fog obscuring reality from Nicky Hunter is both foreshadowing and symbolic of why she is there. Her purpose is to clear away the symbolic fog that surrounds her mother’s disappearance.

“‘Hello, Mr. or Ms. Hunter,’ he says. ‘I’m Sebastian Trapp.’”

This quote from Sebastian is easily read as a courtesy, referring to the ambiguous nature of Nicky’s letters to Sebastian regarding gender and the name Nicky Hunter. It is, however, a clue and an important indication that he suspects he knows who Nicky is. At this point, however, he is still trying to figure out what has happened over the last 20 years—particularly to his wife, now that he sees the person who used to be his son.

“[N]ow she perceives the instruments arranged across the blotting pad beside the typewriter: a small noose in wrought iron; a bronze candlestick sans candle; a viper-green poison bottle, unstoppered, empty; a dagger, slender and silver; a Webley-Fosbery automatic—Simon St. John’s weapon of choice.”

Chekhov’s gun, a literary device referred to by the characters in Chapter 48, is the idea that a device or object introduced in the beginning of a play or book must be used by the end. The classic example is a gun that appears in Act 1 in Chekhov’s 1896 play