V is for (Books About) Villains #atozchallenge

For A to Z 2018, my theme is Books About ____. If you’re stopping by from your own A to Z blog, feel free to leave a link. If you need help with how to do that, you can look here.

If you’re someone looking to read a lot of great blogs, here’s the link for the A to Z challenge.

I do love a good villain, one with their own story, who you can even sort of understand and root for. So many villains are one-dimensional and boring. When they’re not, they’re often the best part of the book.

Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, by Thomas Harris (horror): I loved Hannibal Lecter the moment he said he liked eating the rude. I think of that often in the grocery store. He appealed to me because of how manipulative he was, like a chess master, using people as the pawns. These books would not have been as good with a lesser villain.

Gavin in Fearscape, Horrorscape, and Terrorscape, by Nenia Campbell (YA horror): Before I get to the review part, I need to be honest about these books. The first one was fantastic, but quality went downhill as they continued. I still liked them a lot by the last one, but the last two would have benefitted greatly from better editing. (I think the second two were self-published. If they were ever re-edited and re-released, I’d definitely buy them.) Okay, so anyway… Gavin is a creepy stalker who develops an interest in Valerian, despite her friends telling her to stay away. I loved these books because they didn’t make the bad boy turn good with the influence of the right girl. He is a creep and that doesn’t change.

Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey (classic): There’s nothing worse than someone who’s awful to people in their care. That’s one of the things that makes Nurse Ratched one of the evilest characters of all time. She’s a control freak, among other things, and McMurphy and his chaos are perfect foils for her. It’s a classic story.

Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain (horror): In my mind, there’s nothing better than a female villain (done well), and Gretchen is one of the perfect ones. She’s a serial killer who’s also a psychologist. She manipulates her way into working with police and then tortures the police detective in charge. Instead of killing him, she then lets him go and turns herself in, professing her love for him. But it turns out that it was all another manipulation, and she keeps manipulating him from jail, Hannibal Lecter-style. There’s a second book I haven’t gotten to, mostly because I didn’t know it existed. It’s now on my TBR.

Who are your favorite villains?

R is for Red Dragon

Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris, is technically part of the universe that encompasses Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, though it takes place before either of those books.  It introduces Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

My absolute favorite character is Will Graham, who is a brilliant profiler who can get into the heads of serial killers.  This book kicked off a lifetime fascination with serial killers, and made me (for a long time) want to be an FBI profiler.  Ultimately, I didn’t go that direction with my career, which part of me has always regretted.

Red Dragon is about a man who believes that every time he murders someone, he is moving toward becoming “The Great Red Dragon.”  Will Graham is asked to come out of retirement to help the FBI catch him.

Will Graham is very good at his job, but he retired because connecting with the monsters in that way became too much for him.  The price was too high.  I’d never thought of people like him being tortured by their talent.  It made me wonder what secrets people keep behind their masks of competence.

This may also be the first book I read where the bad guy is sympathetic, and even likable at times.  Yes, he’s clearly insane.  Yes, he’s dangerous.  But he’s also tortured, complex, and has redeeming qualities.  It made me want to understand bad guys.

I love a bad guy who’s just pure evil, but I also love ones who are multi-dimensional.  Bad guys and good guys both have secrets and needs and whole other lives.

It’s a dark book, but if you enjoy this kind of thing and have never read it, it’s my favorite of the three.

“Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.”
― Thomas Harris

V is for Villians

But… but… I’m not a villain! I’m a good dog!

I love a good villain, but I prefer a complex villain.  One dimensional evil is kind of boring and doesn’t offer much in the way of character development or surprise.  I prefer villains with their own ethical codes.  It doesn’t have to be a code I agree with; it’s just important that whatever the code is, it’s consistent.

Villains are meant to move a story forward, but at their best, are foils for the hero, a way to contrast the hero’s choices and make the hero shine brighter.

So what makes a good villain?

I think that they have to be in somewhat understandable and relatable.  Who wants to read about a villain who is so far out there that no one cares.  That’s one of the things I liked about Hannibal Lecter (from Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Hannibal by Thomas Harris); he didn’t do things he considered to be rude, and he “ate the rude.”  Sure, a little extreme, but I agree that the rude should be punished.

They have to live by a set of rules.  Annie Wilkes of Misery (by Stephen King) was CRAZY.  But she didn’t like profanity, didn’t like cheating, and liked fiction.  Maybe she was okay with hobbling a guy, but she wasn’t going to say any naughty words while doing it.

They should be well-developed enough to be an actual character.  Seems a bit obvious, but I want to know a little bit about my villain.  Enough to know what makes them a villain.  In Watchers, by Dean Koontz, The Outsider’s character was so well-developed that I felt a little sad and wondered if he could have been redeemed, even though I knew he had to die.

Though sometimes mystery is good.  Darth Vader was much scarier in Star Wars IV-VI than he was in I-III.  ‘Nuff said.

They should be scary.  If a villain isn’t scary, what’s the point?  Evil should always scare us.  The Joker in The Dark Knight was one of the scariest villains in a long time, and what made him scary was his complete and total unpredictability.  (That’s not to say he didn’t live by a set of rules; he did.  But he was all about anarchy, which is inherently unpredictable.)

Sometimes the villain makes you kinda agree with them.  A little.  I love villains who make me question my views on morality.  Erik Lensher aka Magneto in the X-men movies.  He’s tired of being a second class citizen, so he wants to kill off all his potential oppressors.  Yeah, it’s wrong.  But if wrong is a continuum, it’s not at the far, far end.  Is it?

Writing villains can be satisfying and fun, but it’s also difficult to do well.  I’m not saying that a good villain must have all these qualities, but at least one or two, and scary is a MUST.

 

“The villains were always ugly in books and movies. Necessarily so, it seemed. Because if they were attractive—if their looks matched their charm and their cunning—they wouldn’t only be dangerous.

They would be irresistible.”
― Nenia Campbell

Who’s your favorite villain?