Truly Devious characters

First appears in chapter 4

A sixteen-year-old from Pittsburgh who has spent years reading about unsolved crimes and building case files in her bedroom. She won a place at Ellingham Academy by proposing, as her self-directed project, to solve the 1936 kidnapping that made the school famous. Blunt, observant and socially awkward, she lives with an anxiety disorder and panic attacks she manages with medication, and she is quietly at odds with her parents, who work for a conservative senator whose politics she rejects.

First appears in chapter 4

Stevie's neighbor in Minerva House, an engineering student who works with circuits, motors and tools and is building an elaborate chain-reaction machine for a national competition. Warm, organized and generous with her time, she is the first person at Ellingham to make Stevie feel welcome.

First appears in chapter 5

A Minerva House student who published a long fantasy novel while still a teenager and was admitted to Ellingham on the strength of it. He now owes his publisher a sequel he cannot write, and avoids the work about as thoroughly as he avoids other people. Dry and reluctant, he becomes one of Stevie's closest friends.

First appears in chapter 5

A striking Minerva House student, the star and creator of a popular online serial about a zombie outbreak, which is what earned him his place at the school. Comfortable with attention and used to being filmed, he is planning a new episode to be shot on campus and begins asking Stevie to help him arrange it.

Also known as Ellie

First appears in chapter 5

A Minerva House student who goes by Ellie: an artist and musician who paints, plays the saxophone and keeps unpredictable hours. She has spent time in France, treats school rules as suggestions, and knows the campus and its forgotten corners better than most of the people who work there.

First appears in chapter 5

A student living in Minerva House: rumpled, evidently wealthy, and relentlessly sardonic. He seems to enjoy provoking Stevie from their first meeting and deflects every question about himself, including where he comes from and why he is at Ellingham at all.

Also known as Pix

First appears in chapter 4

The faculty member in charge of Minerva House, an archaeologist who has worked on excavations and keeps a few unsettling specimens around her rooms. Practical, calm and very hard to alarm, she looks after the house's students without fussing over them.

Also known as Larry

First appears in chapter 4

The head of campus security at Ellingham, a former police detective who asks everyone to call him Larry. Methodical and plainspoken, unimpressed by the school's mythology and by amateur detectives, he nevertheless takes Stevie's interest in the old case more seriously than she expects.

First appears in chapter 7

The head of Ellingham Academy, informal and enthusiastic, who insists that students and staff use first names. He believes in learning by doing, encourages Stevie's project, and is deeply invested in the school's standing.

First appears in chapter 9

A student who runs a campus news operation, filming and posting reports on everything that happens at Ellingham. Persistent and unsentimental about other people's privacy, she turns up wherever there is something to record.

First appears in chapter 9

A theatrical student with a strong singing voice who takes a leading role in Hayes's production and is often at his side.

First appears in chapter 3

The immensely wealthy businessman who built Ellingham Academy in the mountains of Vermont in the 1930s as a free school for gifted students. He loved riddles, puzzles, games and practical jokes, and had the campus and its Great House laid out to indulge them.

First appears in chapter 3

Albert Ellingham's much younger wife: restless, glamorous and impatient with the isolation of the mountain estate. In April 1936 she and their small daughter were taken from the road below the school.

First appears in chapter 3

The Ellinghams' daughter, a small child at the time of the April 1936 kidnapping. She was never found, and the question of what became of her has drawn searchers, hoaxers and claimants ever since.

First appears in chapter 3

A scholarship student at Ellingham from a poor neighborhood of New York City: small, bookish and devoted to the Sherlock Holmes stories. She explores the estate on her own and has found her way into the tunnel beneath the grounds, where she likes to read undisturbed.

First appears in chapter 6

A lawman attached to the Ellingham family who had earlier protected Albert Ellingham from an attempt on his life and became a trusted friend of the household. When the kidnapping happens, he is the man Ellingham turns to first.

First appears in chapter 6

Iris Ellingham's closest friend, a frequent and long-staying guest at the estate. At ease in the family's world and protective of Iris, she is part of the household without belonging to it.

Also known as Leo

First appears in chapter 8

A celebrated painter and old friend of the Ellinghams who spends long stretches at the estate, observing the household with detachment and working when it suits him.

First appears in chapter 6

Albert Ellingham's young private secretary: exact, tireless and privately exasperated by his employer's appetite for games. He runs the household's business and correspondence.