The Locked Door

Aaron Nierling is the father of protagonist Nora Davis and a secondary antagonist in The Locked Door. He is a phlebotomist and serial killer convicted of killing many women, and is serving “eighteen consecutive life sentences in a maximum security penitentiary” when the novel begins (5).

In the chapters narrated by 11-year-old Nora, Aaron is described as tall with “thick dark brown hair that’s almost black and nice white teeth” (30). When Nora visits Aaron as an adult, “his formerly thick black hair has turned entirely gray” and “he looks like he’s shrunk” in size (222). He is characterized as a charismatic but dangerous figure. Before his arrest, Aaron was believed to be “a dedicated husband and father—a family man” (5). Nora remembers that he “could really turn up the charm when he wanted to” (35) and that, as a result of his good looks and charm, “all the teachers get giggly around him” (30). These passages highlight Aaron’s charismatic nature, which allows him to hide his crimes.

As an adult, Nora recognizes that despite his charm, Aaron is a dangerous man. She describes her father as “an incredible liar [who] kept his crimes from everybody who knew him, including the people who lived with him” (241). Aaron eventually reveals his crimes to his daughter Nora, but only because he “always wanted a protégé” and hoped to turn her into a murderer like him (276). In addition to the violence of his murders, Aaron is cruel to the people around him, telling his wife that “she should try to lose some weight” (27) almost daily. Aaron’s cruelty and willingness to endanger those around him contrast with his charismatic exterior. It is revealed by the novel’s end that Aaron gets arrested after 11-year-old Nora tips off the police about his crimes.

Harper Nierling is the sister of protagonist Nora Davis and the primary antagonist of The Locked Door. For most of the novel, Nora does not know that Harper is her sister, just that she is an assistant at Nora’s private medical practice. Harper is in “her early twenties” (35) and is described as having “long legs and shiny dark hair and big blue eyes” (34). Nora describes Harper as “the youngest and prettiest” of all the people interviewed for her position and suggests that Philip chose her to abuse his position as her boss (34). Harper’s early apparent vulnerability is meant to distract from the fact that she is the killer at the heart of the story.

Harper is responsible for the murders of Shelby Gillis and Amber Swanson, and for setting up Nora for those crimes. Until the revelation of her crimes, Harper is characterized as a vulnerable potential protégé for Nora; after Harper admits to her crimes, she is depicted as a foil to Nora in her relationship with Aaron. Nora’s grandmother “refused” to take in Harper after their mother’s death by suicide, preferring to “pretend [she] didn’t even exist” (290). When she turned 18, Harper researched her closed adoption and discovered the truth about her father, Aaron Nierling. She tells Nora that the discovery “was like finding the missing puzzle piece” (290). Whereas Nora has tried to distance herself from Aaron, Harper claims that she “would never” have turned their father in and prides herself in being “a much better daughter” than Nora (290). Harper is motivated by this desire to prove herself to her father. By the end of the novel, she has been imprisoned for her crimes.

Brady Mitchell is the primary love interest of protagonist Nora Davis. He is a bartender at Christopher’s, Nora’s favorite dive bar. Brady and Nora dated in college but broke up when Brady revealed he owned a Halloween mask with the face of Nora’s father, Aaron Nierling. In college, Brady was “clean-shaven and skinny and gangly,” but when they meet as adults, Nora notices that “his face filled out and […] it’s hard not to notice his chest filled out too” (56). He is characterized as a kind, charming man offering Nora a second chance at happiness.

When Nora and Brady reconnect as adults at Christopher’s, Nora’s immediate impression is that “Brady is nice. He was nice back in college and he’s still nice now” (147). When they go out for the first time, Brady opens Nora’s car door for her, leading her to reflect that “someone raised him to have good manners” (101). Nora remembers that he wore a tie on their first date in college and is charmed by the memory of “how hard he was trying” (102). These passages highlight Brady’s characterization as a kind, charming man who is unlike Nora’s father.

Nora’s rekindled romance with Brady encounters difficulties when she becomes suspicious of him. His landlady claims to have heard screams from his apartment, and when Nora finds and opens a closed door in his apartment, she discovers a child’s bedroom. Brady tells her the room belongs to his daughter Ruby, but when his landlady’s niece insists that Brady lives alone, Nora begins to fear that Brady might be lying to her while committing crimes. However, she eventually discovers that Brady has been telling the truth and that as an adult, he has outgrown his youthful true crime fixation. The fact that the novel ends with Nora engaged to Brady suggests that he represents her second chance at happiness after the trauma of her childhood and Harper’s murders.

Philip Corey is Nora Davis’s medical partner and business partner. He has “handsome features” (34) and is “the sort of doctor that all the female patients fall in love with” (14). He is characterized as a foil to Nora: Where she is frugal and low-maintenance, he is flashy and outgoing. Philip drives “a red Tesla” which Nora calls his “midlife crisis car,” while Nora drives a green Toyota Camry, which she describes as “a fine, sensible car in a sensible color” (17).

Their personality differences are also visible in their office décor. Philip’s office is lavishly decorated with a “leather couch and mahogany desk” while Nora settles for “a simple wooden desk [she] bought online with a small bookcase” (39). The most significant difference is their attitude toward relationships. While Nora avoids human contact at all costs, Philip dates widely and is notorious for “hooking up with nurses at the hospital” (187). Although Nora dismisses Philip as “a creepy older guy hitting on his twenty-five-year-old receptionist” (264), the novel also suggests that she is jealous of his ability to quickly form emotional connections with strangers. Toward the end of the novel, Philip becomes one of Harper’s victims, with Nora discovering him chained and with his hand severed in her basement. He survives the attack.

Linda Nierling is the wife of Aaron Nierling and the mother of protagonist Nora Davis and antagonist Harper Nierling. She died by suicide shortly after her husband’s arrest while pregnant with Harper. She is described as “such a mom” by 11-year-old Harper (27). Although she was “almost bony” when she married Aaron Nierling, she later gained weight, which her husband would insult her for.

Her culpability in Aaron Nierling’s murders is left ambiguous in the narrative. Although Aaron describes his wife as “oblivious” to his crimes, Nora believes “she wasn’t as innocent as she pretended to be” (230). Nora describes how her mother would “clean the house herself, top to bottom” (26), suggesting that Linda must have been exposed to evidence of her husband’s crimes and that she chose to die rather than be convicted as an accessory to murder.

At the end of the novel, Harper suggests that Linda was innocent and that she died because she knew she was pregnant and “didn’t want to bear any more of [Aaron’s] children” (290). Ultimately, the novel does not offer a concrete answer about whether Linda was aware of her husband’s crimes or whether she died in order to prevent the birth of another murderer. This ambiguity makes Linda a complex character despite the fact that she dies before the action of the novel begins and only features briefly in Nora’s flashback scenes.