The Butterfly Garden

“He pulls the picture from his pocket and holds it up against the glass, looking between the glossy paper and what he can see of the design on the girl’s back. It wouldn’t be significant except that all but one of the girls have them.”

Victor Hanoverian, lead detective in a developing case that involves the kidnapping of numerous teenage girls, discovers that almost all of the victims have been marked on their backs, presumably by their captor. For reasons of suspense, this “design” is not described until later. The fact that one of the girls is unmarked introduces another mystery.

“When they asked her [her name], she just turned away. As far as anyone can tell, this is one girl with no interest in being found. […] Which makes some of them wonder if she’s a victim at all.”

Inara, the novel’s young protagonist, has been singled out by the detectives because of her secretiveness, which makes them suspect that she might be the kidnapper’s accomplice rather than a victim. This distinction gives her a central role in the investigation, and thus in the narrative, because it is through the detectives’ questioning of her that the story unfolds: As in many a police procedural, the detectives serve as the reader’s stand-ins as they slowly unlock the secrets of the Garden, and Inara’s furtive manner tells them that she, as opposed to the other girls, might have insider knowledge of the case. This adds to the story’s suspense because Inara is clearly hiding things from the detectives—personal, perhaps guilty, secrets that are not revealed until the end of the novel.