Apart from Jenkins, Widmerpool is the only one of the 300-odd characters who takes part in the action of each of the 12 volumes.[7] Richard Jones, writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review, suggests that the novels may be regarded as "the dance of Kenneth Widmerpool, who is Jenkins's fall-guy, tormentor, and antithesis". Widmerpool dogs Jenkins's career and life; in the opening pages of the first book at school, he is encountered running through the mists, in the vain hope of athletic glory. In the final stages of the last book he is running again, this time at the behest of the quasi-religious cult that has claimed him.[3]