If you’ve read a handful of these Ransom Notes posts, you’re probably hip to the fact that I’ve got a big yen for the bad guys, and I’m real happy-like to report that 2011 gave us some real doozies.
I’ve put together a retrospective and to make it on to this list a character had to posses more than just a contrary position, they had to reveal enough of their (consistent) psychological make up for me to recognize their personality while remaining unpredictable or unstable, an x-factor or just plain scaring the pants off of me. Ready?
2011 The Year in Villains
The Adjustment by Scott Phillips. Wayne Ogden is so out of step with your delicate sensibilities that he’s actually walking away, and he’s having such a damn good time of it, that by the end of The Adjustment you might feel tempted to turn around yourself. But be forewarned, he’s a certified sociopath, and you may not be. Wayne’s titular problem re-inserting himself into civilian life, after being his own boss as a pimp and black marketer under color of the Army Quartermaster Corps in WWII, is a most delicious disaster unfolding in short bursts of shocking behavior and tying together numerous threads of at-odds interests into one beautiful cluster-cuss of a self-serving symphony.
Don't ever let him do you a favor.
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock. Oh my, oh my, oh my. Pollock gave us not just one, but two pairs of memorable villains in his epic road trip through hell and Ohio. First Roy and Theodore are a traveling revival show like you’re not likely to catch on TBN. Roy does the preaching, praying and spider handling while Theo lays down a wicked guitar soundtrack from his wheel chair. They’re forced to flee the law after Roy kills his wife to test whether or not he really can raise the dead (spoiler alert: he still needs practice), and things go downhill from there. Meanwhile Carl & Sandy Henderson are an unremarkable sad-sack married couple eleven months out of the year (she works in a diner, he rarely works as a portrait photographer), but when they take their yearly vacation road trip, they really let their hair down and have some fun. Their favorite road-game? Picking up hitchhikers and torturing them to death.
Don’t ever heed Roy’s altar call, make Theo jealous, flirt with Sandy or pose for Carl.
Dust Devils by Roger Smith. Inja Mazibuko is one evil mutha. He’s a hit man, misogynist, racist, and a community leader, hell, he’s a cop. His presence in your life is only bad news, and there’s a long line of corpses you could ask about that (some he’s been married to). His current plans include killing off political rivals of the Chief (and anybody else who gets in his way… and their families… and his partners) and marrying a teenager who he’s purchased from a poor family because he believes that coitus with a young virgin will cure his AIDS.
Don’t ever go on a date with him, not even for the best sheep’s head in town.
Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski. The Accident People may be the greatest conspiracy executors since The Cigarette Smoking Man finally got hisself blowed up. They have the means and they have a plan. You’re already playing into it. Mann, their topless sunbathing director runs a tight production and never exhausts her supply of contingency plans. You think you can understand her? You think she can be bargained with? You’re wrong. And you think a few glass shards in her eyeball will slow her down? Buddy, she’s already won, and she’ll send to Hell and Gone.
Don’t ever stop running.
The Terror of Living by Urban Waite. Grady Fisher is making a name for himself as a hired killer. He's lethal on land or on sea, and isn't afraid to go big. He’s also prone to discussions with targets that miraculously elude his knives and guns the first time. He might try to cut a deal with you over the phone – you’re dead, or as good as and there’s no avoiding his reach, but stop running away from him and maybe he wont kill your wife or your horse or a whole buncha other folks too. He’s persistent, ruthless and enjoys his work.
Don’t ever let him show you a magic trick or take care of your pets.
You Believers by Jane Bradley. One big handicap that Jesse Hollowfield has going into this lineup is that You Believers starts after the fact. Katy Connor is already missing, so when we’re introduced to him, his cards are already on the table. Still in the flashback abduction scene, even as we know where it’s going, and even as we beg Katy not to let him into the car, he’s such a charming little sleaze ball, we kinda understand why Katy makes that terrible decision to walk on the wild side.
Don’t ever offer him a ride.
You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz. William, the wheel chair bound, sunflower seed spitting, mysterious and threatening, antagonist behind the collapse of Mike Wingate’s carefully constructed second life positively steals the show from his (comparatively) straight-arrow foils. So much that I kinda wish he’d been the point of view character. He appears first at an oddly comic angle in the reader’s field of vision, but as his relationship to his partner Dodge, and the plot in general, comes into sharper focus, an uncomfortable level of empathy for him is established even as the general dastardliness levels skyrocket.
Don’t ever have a public confrontation with this man in a wheel chair.
Still more 2011 books featuring great villains (I've run out of room to discuss at length): The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey, Cold Shot to the Heart by Wallace Stroby, Beast of Burden by Ray Banks, Already Gone by John Rector, Getting Off by Lawrence Block, The Bastard Hand by Heath Lowrence, The Wrong Thing by Barry Graham.
You have a weakness for good badness too? Check out this anthology - The Book of Villains edited by Josh Woods. A celebration of baddies being dastardly.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
