The Racketeer

Malcolm describes Quinn as one of his only Black friends at Frostburg and later as the best friend he ever had. Quinn was in Frostburg on drug charges. He comes from a family of drug dealers; he grew up in the trade, and most of his family is involved—all except Vanessa. Quinn is repeatedly described by the FBI as smart, but the interrogation scene and his confession seem to contradict that. The only clue to great intelligence on his part is the recognition in the middle of the interrogation that Malcolm is the one who revealed his supposed plot to murder the judge. When the full plot is revealed, however, it becomes evident that Quinn did use great intelligence to walk the line with the interrogators and lure them into the scheme without giving away his ulterior motives.

Malcolm describes Quinn’s sister Vanessa only as beautiful. He is enamored of her at first sight. Vanessa has kept herself at a distance from her family’s criminal endeavors, which also keeps her out of the FBI’s line of sight when they arrest Quinn. However, Vanessa retains a streak of her family’s taste for larceny that allows her to think quickly and enter wholeheartedly into aiding Malcolm’s confidence scheme. She acts as a shill, playing multiple roles as the scheme unfolds, and she demonstrates herself to be skilled at manipulating people like Nathan Cooley.

In keeping with Malcolm’s role as an unreliable narrator, he withholds his full relationship with Vanessa at the outset, only revealing this aspect of his life at the end of the novel, along with the rest of the plan.

Nathan is initially a sympathetic character. He is a relatively young man who is trying to stay away from his family’s drug trade. Grisham uses Nathan to underline two additional failures in the justice system. The DEA assassination of Nathan’s brother is a crime that will go unpunished. Nathan also provides a thoughtful analysis of the role of the drug trade in a depressed economy. Grisham therefore uses this character to surmise why a basically decent young man might fall into the drug trade. Malcolm has also previously remarked that many of the young men in Frostburg are drug offenders who are being punished unfairly for nonviolent crimes. Nathan initially seems to be one of that number, but he is eventually revealed to be something quite different from his outward appearance. He is in reality a ruthless killer who tortures a woman and murders two people, and he shows no remorse for doing so. He has no personal vendetta against the judge, much less against the woman he tortures. His motive is entirely based on greed.

Nathan’s actions give rise to an additional ethical consideration, for although he is the one who commits the murders, Malcolm does nothing to stop him. A timely warning to the prison administration might have prevented the judge’s death. Instead, Malcolm makes himself an accessory not only to the killing of the judge, who was at least a criminal himself, but also to the murder of an innocent woman. Like Nathan, Malcolm uses pressure to get access to the gold. Unlike Nathan, Malcolm uses nonlethal means to extract the information.