Real Tigers
POV map
Question
Who sees what, and what does the distribution of viewpoints do to the reader’s knowledge?
Evidence
| Ch | Words | Sections | POVs |
|---|---|---|---|
| C00 | 1,092 | 1 | Paul Lowell |
| C01 | 9,501 | 13 | Narrator, Catherine Standish, Roderick Ho, Louisa Guy, Marcus Longridge, Shirley Dander, River Cartwright, Jackson Lamb |
| C02 | 5,237 | 6 | Catherine Standish, River Cartwright, Jackson Lamb, Narrator |
| C03 | 5,682 | 7 | Louisa Guy, River Cartwright, Ingrid Tearney, Catherine Standish, Diana Taverner |
| C04 | 5,772 | 10 | River Cartwright, Marcus Longridge, Sylvester Monteith, Sean Donovan, Catherine Standish |
| C05 | 5,896 | 10 | Louisa Guy, River Cartwright, Ingrid Tearney, Jackson Lamb, Catherine Standish, Nick Duffy |
| C06 | 7,835 | 7 | Ingrid Tearney, Sylvester Monteith, Jackson Lamb, Peter Judd |
| C07 | 5,900 | 6 | Jackson Lamb, Catherine Standish, Marcus Longridge |
| C08 | 4,106 | 5 | Sean Donovan, River Cartwright, Jackson Lamb, Catherine Standish |
| C09 | 9,080 | 13 | Peter Judd, River Cartwright, Marcus Longridge, Louisa Guy, Roderick Ho, Shirley Dander |
| C10 | 7,466 | 11 | River Cartwright, Roderick Ho, Shirley Dander, Nick Duffy, Ingrid Tearney |
| C11 | 6,543 | 11 | River Cartwright, Catherine Standish, Jackson Lamb, Louisa Guy, Nick Duffy, Shirley Dander, Roderick Ho, Marcus Longridge |
| C12 | 5,814 | 10 | Catherine Standish, Marcus Longridge, Jackson Lamb, River Cartwright, Shirley Dander, Nick Duffy, Ben Traynor, Douglas |
| C13 | 4,646 | 6 | Diana Taverner, Catherine Standish, Shirley Dander, Louisa Guy, Ingrid Tearney |
| C14 | 4,972 | 8 | Nick Duffy, Roderick Ho, Shirley Dander, Louisa Guy, Diana Taverner |
| C15 | 4,174 | 8 | Catherine Standish, River Cartwright, Marcus Longridge, Jackson Lamb, Shirley Dander |
| C16 | 3,245 | 2 | Diana Taverner, Narrator |
Section-level totals (134 sections): River Cartwright 29, Catherine Standish 17, Jackson Lamb 14, Marcus Longridge 13, Shirley Dander 12, Louisa Guy 8, Ingrid Tearney 8, Roderick Ho 7, Nick Duffy 6, Diana Taverner 4, Peter Judd 4, Narrator 3, Sylvester Monteith 3, Sean Donovan 3, Paul Lowell 1, Ben Traynor 1, Douglas 1.
Reading
Real Tigers has eighteen heads and a much clearer spine than Dead Lions: River has 29 of 134 sections and Catherine 17, and the book regularly cuts between them as prisoner and searcher. What distinguishes it from the previous two novels is that the antagonists have interiors.
Three choices matter:
- The reader is inside the tiger team. C04 gives Monteith a section, C06 gives him another beside Judd’s, C08 gives Donovan one, C12 gives Traynor one. Nothing about who hired whom is withheld. The tension therefore is not “who is behind this” but “will the slow horses work it out before the professionals tidy them away” — a different engine from Dead Lions, where Katinsky had no POV at all.
- Catherine’s captivity is a third of the book’s mind. She has more sections than anyone except River, and almost all of them are in one room. The book uses her to think, not to act: what she notices about Bailey, the wine, which colleague she would trust with her life, and finally Charles Partner.
- Tearney gets eight sections and Judd four. The First Desk and the Home Secretary are seen planning, trading and misjudging; the pleasure is watching them do it in front of us and still lose the folder.
The costs are visible too. Louisa Guy carries the archive assault but has only eight sections; Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander get thirteen and twelve between them and still spend the climax being captured, escaping and re-captured. The book’s affections are with Catherine and River, and its structural attention goes to the Park.
Confidence
High on the counts (generated from the chapter pages, which come from the extraction). The “antagonists have interiors” reading follows from the section list, not from a statement in the text; the claim that the book’s engine is competence-versus-ignorance is interpretive.