In Defense of Difficult

The first time I met Carla Speed McNeil was at Stumptown comics fest. She was sharing a table with my friend Bill. She was doing sketches, and I asked for one of Lynne. Speed whistled through her teeth, and said she’d need a few minutes: “Lynne’s difficult.”

Lynne Grosvenor is my favorite character in Finder. He’s not the one I identify with most—that’d be Marcie, with a dash of Jack (you’ll meet him later)—or the one with whom I’d most like to split a six-pack (Jaeger and Brom; better make it a twelve-pack).

See, Lynne isn’t a nice guy. He’s an infotrader—so, that most frustrating mix of secretive and nosy—and he’s got a chip on his shoulder large enough that it’s probably upgraded to a full-fledged board. He can be vicious and calculatedly cruel; he’s got more issues than the full run of Life magazine. In short, he’s the kind of character who makes people grateful that he’s fictional.

And that’s exactly why I like him. Lynne is complicated. He’s all the things I rattled off above—but he’s also acutely sympathetic and intensely interesting. Few of Finder’s characters are shy of a full three dimensions, but none is as layered as Lynne, and there’s none I find as fascinating.

Rachel Edidin, Finder Editor