The author presents Bill Hodges as a good man who has fallen short of his own standards. In his retirement, Hodges is granted the opportunity to reconnect with the man he feels he should have been—not the cynical, relentless hunter but the knight and protector.

In the beginning of his transformation, Hodges is confronted with his death; both at the beginning of the story when he contemplates suicide and at the end when he has a heart attack. A kind of metaphorical death he faces is the death of his reputation because he failed to solve the biggest case of his career. As the novel progresses, he realizes that his failure to solve the Mr. Mercedes case was due to unjustly blaming Olivia Trelawney. However, the biggest symbolic death that Hodges faces is the loss of the career that once formed his identity, and he fears that he cannot survive that loss.

Hodges’s deep emotional reaction to the loss of career and reputation comes from the same qualities that make him a good example of the hard-boiled detective. He has a degree of cynicism, but it covers a well-concealed heart of gold. The cynicism of the hard-boiled detective is a reaction to idealism in a world that seems unbearably flawed.