Julia Minna Character Analysis

Julia Minna is Frank Minna’s wife—and, later, his widow. Sultry, tempestuous, and mysterious, Julia Minna has, since her sudden appearance in Frank’s life over a decade ago, become a kind of lodestar for the Minna Men who work under Frank. Lionel, Tony, Gilbert, and Danny are all, to differing degrees, in love with Julia—yet because she’s their boss’s wife, they understand that she is the ultimate unattainable woman. Early on in the novel, shortly after Frank is murdered, Lionel heads to Julia and Frank’s apartment to deliver the grim news—but Julia has already heard what’s happened, and she is packing to leave Brooklyn forever. As Lionel investigates Minna’s murder, he comes to realize that there’s always been more to Julia than meets the eye. When he finally tracks her down, he finds her hiding out at a Zen retreat in Maine, working as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant connected to a Buddhist study center. It turns out that Julia once loved Frank’s older brother Gerard, who met Julia when he came to the study center to learn more about Zen—and later, when Gerard became too devoted to his studies to love her, she fell for Frank. As her marriage with Frank deteriorated, Julia two-timed Frank with Tony Vermonte and other unnamed men—now, she simply wants to untangle herself from the Minna Men’s vast, sprawling web of influence and crime. Julia is a woman who longs for control over her life but struggles to find it, bouncing from man to man in search of validation and wholeness. Sexy but cruel and intelligent but rootless, Julia embodies many key traits of the femme fatale stereotype so intrinsic to noir detective stories.