I’m listening to Juno Steel and the Man in Glass again, and y’know what just struck me?
Juno is smarter than Nureyev.
Nureyev is presented as the polished master thief with a thousand faces, sure, but all his skill points are in bluff. He knows how to blend in, how to thieve, and most importantly, how to handle people, string them along with pretty words and meaningful glances. He’s the face, the charm, the trickster.
Juno is none of that. But what we sometimes forget is that Juno was able to make a living as a detective for a while for a reason. He acts as though he doesn’t care, like he isn’t paying attention, but he notices things, and connects one thought to the other fast enough that sometimes even he doesn’t realize it until he’s already acting. He has impeccable instincts, but more often than not, instincts like that come from absorbing dozens of tiny bits of information and subconsciously stringing them together until the conclusion suddenly seems obvious, and it doesn’t occur to him that it’s very likely no one else has noticed.
Juno can’t bluff to save his life (as we’ve seen) and he does tend to the quick & dirty approach to crime solving/crime committing, but even the decision to let himself get beat to a pulp is, at least subconsciously, calculated. Juno is really incredibly intelligent, but with how he presents himself, nobody really notices until it’s too late.
& tbh I love that for him.
