The Horror at Red Hook characters

Appears from the start

A New York police detective with an unusually sensitive and imaginative temperament. After a building collapse during an investigation in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he recuperates in Rhode Island but remains terrified by large brick structures and by memories he cannot fit into a rational police report.

First appears in chapter 3

An elderly, reclusive scholar from an old Dutch New York family whose neglected appearance and occult interests have made him a local scandal. Police attention turns toward his frequent contacts in Red Hook and the influence he appears to hold there.

First appears in chapter 4

A young woman from a prosperous Bayside family who becomes engaged to Robert Suydam after his abrupt return to health and respectable society. Her family is surprised by the match but accepts the apparently transformed scholar.

First appears in chapter 5

An ancient female figure invoked in the occult inscriptions and rites connected with the Red Hook cellars. Malone understands her as the presiding supernatural power behind the ceremony he witnesses underground.