Main Characters

Ethan Harris

Ethan Harris is the main protagonist in The House Always Wins. He was born in 1969 and grew up in a small terraced house in Norwood, South London
He is aged 46 in 2015 where the main part of the story is set. He works as an IT Director at MitaSimi Bank,  a specialist Japanese Investment Bank in Canary Wharf London. He is 6’ 1” tall, slim build with slightly greying hair. On the surface he’s a regular decent guy who just happens to be caught up in a series of unfortunate events, but under the surface he is unsettled and in many ways a hostage to events in his early years, He comes from a poor background where his mother had left the home and he struggled to get to university where he went in 1987  to CUL and studied Computer Science. When he graduated in 1991 it was a first class honours degree, mostly because he wanted to prove himself despite his background. This drive to succeed along with a certain measure of OCD makes him very focussed and sometimes cold, however meeting and falling in love with Rachel did soften him, for a while, however ultimately there is harder, survivor core to his being, driven by challenges sometimes with ruthless disregard for anything else around him. 

Rachel Harris

Rachel Harris was Ethan's wife and the opening scene is her funeral after she was murdered a week earlier. She worked as a graphic designer and was 45 when she was killed. She had blonde hair and was slim. She had a strange mix of arty, technical and outgoing personality and apart from her good looks, that quirkiness was one of the things that attracted Ethan to her. As the story progresses more of her secretive personality and mysterious background unfolds as Ethan peels back the layers to uncover the truth about her.

Amy Knight

Amy Knight is an investigative journalist in her early forties. She is quite fit an likes to run for exercise. She is motivated, generous, and thoughtful and once she gets involved in Ethan and Rachel's story she is determined to uncover the truth no matter what the cost. In the past she has done some journalism in Berlin and as the story develops, she returns there.