Some say the most important person in a mystery is the sleuth, others say it is the villain.
Series mysteries feature the sleuth over the villain. These characters become people you visit and have a stay with. Margaret Maron’s Judge Deborah Knott mysteries take the reader through her novice judge days in eastern North Carolina to her filling in for vacationing judges all over the state. The reader can’t wait for the latest Qwilleran investigations concocted by Lillian Jackson Braun in The Cat Who books. The villains have strong, explainable motives, but they are not dealt with in depth in series mysteries.
Literature is different, of course. What would great literature be without great villains? Voltemort in the Harry Potter series in which J. K. Rowling had over 2,000 pages to develop his evil. Tolkein’s Dark Lord ruled in four books. Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs was truly without conscience and proud of it. Villains range from the punk stealing candy from the baby to the delusional ruler leading his world to destruction. It is the intent, rather than the action, that makes the character a villain. If a person is killed in an accident, the defendant is not necessarily a villain. If the accident was staged, then the defendant rises to the status of a true villain.
Some Villain Types:
Archenemy/Evil Overloard/Mastermind. This one is ruled by an overwhelming lust for power. Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost leads this list. He’s omnipotent or nearly so and seeks to control or destroy whole worlds or galaxies. He plans every move carefully, directs lesser criminals and pulls strings of the uninformed.
Greedy Malcontent. Greed demands this villain is never content with what he has. He’s jealous of others and becomes more daring with each success. Ian Fleming’s eponymous villain Goldfinger is the classic example of this type of villain. In Murder at Blue Falls by Maggie Bishop, the villain is driven by greed. Obsessed predators are a subset of the greedy villain type. Usually the obsession is sexual, as in the case of Alex Forrest, played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Like Alex Forrest, the villain can be very charming. In schuyler kaufman’s Dear Mouse ... the villain is the obsessed type.
Weak Follower/True Believer (depending on point of view). Acceptance, even if he’s exploited, is this villain’s driving force. He can be trained to do any evil at his lord’s bidding. The boss is usually an Evil Overlord type (see above). Anakin Skywalker is brought to the Dark Side of the Force by Palpatine, becoming the arch-villain Darth Vader. The albino flagellant in Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code even flays himself in his search for acceptance.
Evil Genius/Scientist. This person of great intelligence chooses to use his knowledge for antisocial ends. He may start out with lofty goals but those deteriorate. Professor Moriarty, the "Napoleon of Crime" in the Sherlock Holmes stories, is the nineteenth-century version of the bullied victim turning into the evil genius. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader of the Star Wars saga starts out by trying to save his wife.
Insane/Sociopathic Serial Killer. Something is missing or has been twisted in this person’s psyche. They are driven to cause harm for a specific reason, but that reason eventually deteriorates into the creation of terror for terror’s sake. The serial killer type must not be confused with the murderer who first kills for a specific reason, and then kills off witnesses to the original crime, or blackmailers seeking to profit from the original guilt. Serial killers choose their victims from a particular sector of society, and generally, these victims are unrelated except for their position in that sector. Perhaps the most chilling example of a fictional serial killer is Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The villain in Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders is thought at first to be a serial killer. Drug-crazed villains are generally shallower versions of the serial killer category. They cannot be reasoned with, and have almost no personalities other than their urge to acquire the next hit, no matter who or what is destroyed in the process. In general, fictional drug addicts who kill fit into the "Weak Follower" category, scoring their hits as rewards for doing their suppliers’ dirty work. This category of villain usually ends up dead by the middle of the book.
Femme Fatale. This is a category of method, rather than motivation. Because women, until very recently (in the last half-century, at a liberal
estimate), have not had the power required to amass a huge evil empire, or
to obtain the education of an evil genius, they have classically used their
sexuality to achieve their ends. Such villains can be driven by any or all
of the usual forces of greed, lust, revenge, or safety. One motive that is almost exclusively the domain of the female villain is that of promoting the welfare of her young. This motive is rare in male villains. Cinderella's Stepmother, and the Wicked Queen in Snow White are examples
of villains motivated by motherly love.
Villains Specific to Appalachia are either direct descendants of villains
from Celtic legend, or else they have been sculpted out of the effects of
the Civil War (the War of Northern Aggression to Southerners). Because there were few slaveholders in the Appalachians, the Civil War engendered a complex web of resentments, obsessions, feuds, and alliances. Many of the mountain folks had little or no sympathy with the rich plantation society of the flat lands; and few understood the economic and political forces behind the Secession. Thus, Confederate bands sent into the hills to draft farmers' sons were hardly welcome (the Confederate conscription laws of 1862 were the first in American history); Home guard bands sent into the hills to retrieve deserters were less so; Union guerillas, some of whom had manners to equal the best Southern gentlemen, still rode away with whatever the Confederate army, the Home Guard, and the Confederate deserters had left behind. It is from these real groups that fictional villains in Appalachian stories are often drawn. In Charles Frazier's book Cold Mountain, the cruelty of the Home Guard villains is historically accurate, up to a point; as is the gentle character of the deserters. "The sad historical truth is that, in the
Appalachian Civil War, there were few good guys and lots of bad guys"-Cathy Schultz, Joliet Herald News, July 4, 2004.
A less direct descendant of the Northern Carpetbagger is the Yankee
peddler, a villain who wavers among being the comedic butt of Southern
mountain sagacity, the picaresque trickster, and the out-and out swindler.
Sims's 1869 villain, the eponymous Voltmeier, can be seen as a "missing
link" character between the Yankee peddler/con man and the land-grabbing
industrial baron. Perhaps one of the most detestable villains of Appalachian fiction is the Depression-era land-grabbing industrial complexes. In Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, the last third of the book provides a compelling portrait of this mega-villain, in the form of a coal-mining corporation. Even Hollywood got into this genre, with The Heart o' the Hills, starring Mary Pickford as the nemesis of a land-grabbing villain (Sam de Grasse).
Villains are less textured, and their motives are easy to understand in
serial mysteries. The main character here is the sleuth, the character who
sniffs out the villain and sends them off, out of polite society, one way or
another. Order is restored, generally without changing the serial mystery's
hero/ine very radically. What mystery buff can forget Miss Marple, Sherlock
Holmes, or Brother Cadfael? In Maggie Bishop's Murder at Blue Falls, Jemma and her horse, and Detective (no given name) Tucker promise a similar place in Appalachian mystery circles.
In stand-alone novels, like The Silence of the Lambs and The DaVinci Code, and schuyler kaufman's Dear Mouse ..., the villains can become as complex as any other character; also, the sleuth can change in the course of the story, because we probably won't be meeting that character again.
Someone once said that the difference between real life and fiction is that
fiction has to make sense. Free of this restriction, we find that real-life
villains generally become sad, inadequate creatures with little that is
memorable about them. They are often identified either by their crimes-the
Green River Strangler; the Columbine shooters-and only by their names if
their crimes were particularly gruesome and rare, like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Fictional villains, on the other hand, are generally known by their names-what crime, specifically, does Goldfinger commit? Of what is Moriarty accused, in a word? You have to read the books to find out. Which fits very neatly into the authors' devious plans.
This blog is the combined effort of Maggie Bishop and schuyler kaufman.
