The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels

Candour is the novel’s antagonist. The doctor is “tall, symmetrically handsome, with square glasses and a broad smile” (77). His spectacles offer a clue that he is the killer because Shenanigan sees a glare from them during the fatal game of Scrabble. The seemingly cordial man spends much of the story smiling, assisting people with their health problems, and making puns. He promises the protagonist, “I will make you laugh, Shenanigan Swift! No matter how long it takes. I’m a doctor—we have a lot of patients” (84). Candour’s cheer allows him to hide his true intentions from the other characters. He swindles Daisy, and his deception is so convincing that Shenanigan tells him about the evidence she found. The ambitious man aspires to become the Swift patriarch, and he’s willing to kill everyone in his family to seize that title. Candour’s deceptive friendliness, greed, and ambition make him the novel’s villain.

In his role as the antagonist, Candour makes important contributions to the story’s plot, suspense, and thematic meaning. He gives the novel some of its most tense moments, including the Scrabble duel to the death and the climax when he threatens Shenanigan at gunpoint in the gravestone-filled cellar. His schemes to seize the family’s fortune and power for himself lead to the central mystery, and the clues he leaves behind provide foreshadowing and help the readers solve the case alongside Shenanigan. In addition, Candour develops the theme of Tradition as an Obstacle to Progress. He represents the worst of the Swift family’s traditional views because he is obsessed with names and wealth and convinced of his own superiority. He tells Shenanigan, “What happens to the people in a family doesn’t matter, as long as the name endures” (282). This ghastly view emphasizes the dangers of the Swifts’ overemphasis on names. Candour’s actions also reveal The Dangers of Greed. His covetousness drives him to attempt to murder everyone at the family reunion, and he loses everything when his plot fails. In a positive twist, Candour’s villainy encourages Shenanigan to persist in her struggle for self-determination since “if there was such a thing as destiny, [he] should have been named Scoundrel or Scum” (286). For better or worse, the Swifts’ names do not decide their character. Candour’s punishment fulfills a conventional expectation of the mystery genre.

Aunt Schadenfreude is the family matriarch. Her “indomitable eyebrows” (97); gray, “no-nonsense bun” (97); and “funereal […] black dress and shawl” emphasize her dour and gloomy personality (72). The stern woman is “highly organized” (7), and this attention to detail helps her meticulously manage the family’s affairs and disputes. Far from relishing her position of power over her relatives, Schadenfreude is “[t]ired of sorting out all [their] problems” (79). The “thick iron collar” she wears as long as she is matriarch represents the heavy burdensomeness of the position (7). Humor abounds in Lincoln’s novel, and Schadenfreude contributes with her dry wit. For example, when Fauna explains that the elderly woman is “awful” according to the archaic definition, Schadenfreude archly observes, “Some would say the modern definition still applies” (329). Schadenfreude is a stern but meticulous and self-sacrificing leader.

Schadenfreude plays two key roles in the narrative as the family matriarch and Candour’s first target. At the start of the novel, Shenanigan views her great-aunt as an antagonist because they represent chaos and order within the family unit, respectively. Developing the theme of The Struggle for Self-Determination, Schadenfreude enforces the family’s belief in nominative determinism by saying that Shenanigan “can’t help her name” when the girl causes mischief (18). Schadenfreude’s attempted murder and feigned death shift her relationship with Shenanigan and lead the story to present her in a new light: “Shenanigan’s grief was beginning to transform Aunt Schadenfreude from scowling nemesis into scowling-but-sympathetic hero” (244). The plot twist that Schadenfreude is alive sends a hopeful message about second chances: Shenanigan has the opportunity to act on her newfound appreciation for her aunt, and Schadenfreude learns that she “underestimated the impact [her] death would have” and that her family loves her more than she realized (313). At the end of the novel, the matriarch advances the theme of progress by naming Fauna as her successor. Although Schadenfreude is an enforcer of tradition, she makes way for change, facilitating the novel’s happy, hopeful ending.

Daisy is Candour’s fiancée. The narrator describes the beautiful American heiress as “a spring day come to life with a gold flower pinned in her natural curls” (77). Under the young woman’s facade of radiant joy, she is torn by unease and guilt because Candour is stealing from her and she fears how ending their engagement will reflect on her family. Lincoln expresses the character’s strong will with a simile comparing her to “a bouquet of flowers with a crowbar in the middle” (172), and she demonstrates resilience by confronting Candour after Aunt Schadenfreude withholds her blessing and after she realizes that he’s the killer. Daisy’s positive attributes also include forgiveness, kindness, and generosity, which she demonstrates by abstaining from vengeance and offering to pay for the repairs to Swift House. Daisy’s isolated status makes her a target of suspicion, but she is ultimately vindicated as a kind and resilient young woman.

As an outsider at the Swift family reunion, Daisy is in a precarious position. Her only ally is Flora because she doesn’t know whom she can trust with her painfully personal secrets. Many of the Swifts, including the protagonist, suspect her of being the criminal largely because she isn’t part of the family. In mystery fiction, authors use a technique called a red herring to divert the reader’s attention. Daisy’s civet coffee and the messages in her handwriting are red herrings because they seem to cast blame on the heiress. In an added twist, Candour deliberately planted these clues to frame his fiancée for his villainous deeds. By making Daisy the protagonist’s chief suspect for much of the novel, Lincoln draws out the mystery, increases suspense, and intensifies the plot twist that Candour is the killer.