Neverwhere

Jessica is Richard’s fiancée at the beginning of the story. For Jessica, prestige and style are important, and she proves herself to be cold and calculating when she tells Richard how to live his life. She even goes so far as to break off her engagement to Richard when he chooses to help Door instead of attending a dinner with her boss. This dramatic shift shows Richard that she never genuinely loved him; she only loved her notions of what he could be.

Door is the catalyst of the novel’s primary plot. She is the oldest daughter of the House of Arch, a family with a unique skill: the ability to open and create passages where others can’t. She introduces Richard to London Below, acting as a guide through the unfamiliar terrain and becoming a friend. 

Door is a static character because her motivations and desires remain the same for most of the novel: She wants to know who murdered her family. Even after she learns that Islington was behind everything, Door’s family motivates her actions at the end of the novel. She decides to continue her father’s work to unite London Below and plans to find her sister, who may be alive.

These two characters are assassins hired by Islington to kill Door’s family and capture her. Both are exceedingly violent and dishonest, but they also act as comedic foils for one another, and their deadpan interactions add a tinge of dark humor to the novel. Mr. Croup is intelligent and talkative, while the quiet yet grim Mr. Vandemar is often slow to understand events happening around them and lacks the vocabulary to fully appreciate Mr. Croup’s loquacious musings. They are flat characters because they lack dimension; their only defining characteristics are their greed and their mutual love of violence.

The Marquis de Carabas is a mysterious character who initially embodies The Threat of Treachery. Though Door looks to him for help, he is clearly a trickster figure. Richard distrusts him for much of the novel, and not without reason. The Marquis approaches every interaction in a transactional way and only helps others when he knows he’ll get something out of the arrangement. He is also very vocal about not wanting Richard along for the journey, which adds to Richard’s suspicion that the Marquis is the one who betrays Door. Not even the Marquis sees himself as a good man. However, he proves himself to be far nobler than either himself or others expect when he risks everything―even losing his life―to help Door get the answers she seeks.

Hunter, referred to initially as “the leather woman,” is a bodyguard who is famous for killing every mythic beast in London Below―though little else is known about her. Door and the Marquis hire her to keep Door safe on her journey. However, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar convince her to betray Door by bribing her with a spear that can supposedly help her to slay the Great Beast of London. In The Pursuit of Redemption, she sacrifices her life so that Richard can kill the beast and save Door.