The three main characters—Pete Willis, Tom Kennedy, and Jake Kennedy—as well as the unnamed kidnapper, whom the story reveals is Francis Carter, son of the Whisper Man Frank Carter, are all coping with trauma that relates to their father’s behavior toward them. In each case, the character’s attempts to process that trauma drives his story arc.

Pete Willis is haunted by the one murder victim he was unable to find, but the words of his father—who constantly spoke of him as if he were a failure and a disappointment—heavily influence his inability to move on from that unsolved murder case. Tom Kennedy, meanwhile, reckons with Pete’s abandonment of the family and in the wake of Rebecca’s death wonders if his son would be better off without him, a line of thinking that his memory of Pete leaving clearly influences. Tellingly, the trauma Pete’s trauma stemming from his relationship with his father ended up creating the trauma that Tom must cope with, leaving him in a position in which he might repeat these behaviors with his son Jake—and trying to avoid it. The story grapples with the ways in which fathers disappoint their sons and the way that this can create a feedback loop that the next generation might perpetuate.