Since Nim and Tor both keep their phone numbers a secret from almost everyone except the heroine, she has a very difficult time trying to reach him by phone, and in both scenes the person who answers the phone pretends not to have heard of him. This was a pleasant treatment compared with the vicious denials I normally got from Nim's answering service. I gave it a try. Besides being experts on computing, both characters are experts on codes. Nim sends Catherine coded messages when she is in Algiers, and he helps her figure out the fortune-teller's message.
Nim lives in a wonderful house on Long Island.
The house Tor buys on the island in San Francisco Bay is also very interesting, although not as enormous as Nim's house. Nim and Tor are both gourmet cooks, while Catherine and Verity do not seem to be interested in cooking. Nim and Tor cook for Catherine and Verity. In both cases, there is a seven-year age difference. Both characters drive an old dark-green car.