58 pages • 1 hour read
Her Deadly Game
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Chess
Content Warning: This section refers to murder, stalking, and psychological manipulation.
Chess is a major motif in the book and a constant feature in Keera’s life. Her relationship with chess is primarily wrapped up in her complicated relationship with her father, Patsy. For most of the novel, Keera only plays chess online with an anonymous opponent, the Dark Knight. As she and her father grow closer, working on the case together, she eventually realizes that Patsy is the Dark Knight and is seeking a connection with her through their shared passion and history with chess. Still unable to completely trust their new relationship, Keera continues to play Patsy online, not revealing that she knows he is the Dark Knight. However, at the end of the novel, when Keera and her father have reconnected, Keera’s willingness to be close to her father again is represented by the shift from playing him online to going to his house to play the final move in person. They immediately begin a new game and, with it, a new stage in their relationship. As Keera tells her father, “Playing chess was never about winning or losing, Dad. It still isn’t. I just wanted to spend time with you. I just wanted to play” (370).
Dugoni also intertwines chess with Keera’s professional life; as Patsy tells her, “[T]he best trial lawyers [are] strong chess players” (57). She uses chess strategy during the trial, referring to the old lessons Patsy taught her when she was young, lending thematic support to Chess Strategy in Law and Life. Additionally, she notices that the feeling she gets in the courtroom echoes the feeling she used to get during competitions; in many ways, Keera views the case and trial itself as a chess game, and Ambrose is her adversary.
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest first enters the narrative with Vince’s creation of his alter ego, Jack Worthing, named after the protagonist of Wilde’s play. As Keera explains it, in the play, “Ernest is the name Jack goes by when he escapes his responsibilities and goes into London to indulge in the behavior he pretends to disapprove of” (147). In Vince’s case, Jack represents everything he aspires to and expects to lead to happiness: wealth and status. However, Jack also plays another role in the novel: Lisa uses the name to send emails to Keera, giving her clues about Vince’s history. Vince’s false identity thus becomes Lisa’s false identity and finally leads to Vince’s downfall as the name Jack Worthing connects him to Cliff Larson’s murder.
Although Vince first introduces the play into the mystery, after Keera reads it, she tells Patsy and Harrison, “A line in the play jumped out at me, […] ‘the truth is rarely pure and never simple’” (147). This quote from the play’s character of Jack resonates with Keera, and she remembers it at several points in the novel. When Keera meets Vince’s mother, Stephanie, Keera’s quotation of the line prompts Stephanie to comment, “Vince used to say stuff like that” (321). Later, when Keera searches for answers about why Anne and Lisa framed Vince, she comments, “I think [the quote] applies here. I just don’t know what the truth is, in this case” (337). The quote becomes a touchstone that the characters refer to as they investigate Anne’s death and uncover Vince’s crime. Dugoni uses it to emphasize its truth concerning the novel’s mystery—the truths of Anne and Vince’s relationship and Vince’s business are complicated.
Sticky Web
At the beginning of the novel, Keera equates joining the family law firm and returning to Sunday family dinners with being drawn into a “sticky web.” The “sticky web” is a metaphor for Keera’s family’s entanglements and enmeshment: “[Keera] believed she’d maintained her independence by declining to work at the family law firm, then had to slink back to the sticky web when her ill-conceived relationship with Ambrose fell apart” (40). Keera’s feelings of being trapped are also connected to the reasons behind her return: her failed relationship with Miller Ambrose, his ensuing harassment, and the unjust and humiliating consequence of having to leave her job. She hasn’t shared this history with her family and clearly values her distance from her family, preserving it with this secret. She fears that her family will interfere, in the same way that she fears Ella will take control of the LaRussa case.
With each renewed connection to the family, like when Patsy and Ella announce at family dinner that they are making Keera a partner, she reacts with feelings of entrapment and suffocation as “the sticky Duggan web entomb[s] her” (46). A promotion that would normally signify success for an attorney becomes a burden in her eyes, as it makes her both responsible and beholden, in her mind, to her family, and her father in particular. To reconnect with her family, Keera must embrace the task of Finding One’s Place in the Family while maintaining her own autonomy and boundaries.
Unlock all 58 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Robert Dugoni
