AtD gold

[Michael Bailey]

I respond more favorably to Merle, although Lew gets around more:
Merle meets the Chums, but Lew rides with them.
Merle gets around the US but Lew gets to London and beyond.

Merle's too absorbed in his pursuits to really surrender to love, best he
can do is devotion (which isn't returned) -  his reasonable acceptance of
his wife's leaving and then his daughter's might be self-control, or it
might be a failure to care enough - or just that he has other things he
cares about more...science geek...

Lew is immediately cast as a stranger to his emotions and even to his own
actions to an extreme degree; he has a vantage point from which he never
completely defines the object of his quest...he's basically a factotum for
whoever employs him, but never completely in sync with them either -- White
City, Nigel and Neville, the Cohen, whoever he's working for in LA...
Lew's orientation is more mysterious, he notices things and people more
clearly than most, perhaps because he's not full of himself, but that
emptiness is a mixed blessing

both of them are kind of solitary guys, but they draw close to others to
the best of their abilities...
it's just not their main thing
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