When I was asked to do a companion volume to my Great British Fictional Detectives – this time on fictional villains – I thought I'd be revisiting many of the same books. Crime books have villains, I thought, so there must be lots of dastardly villainous characters in them for me to use. Not so many, as it turns out. Crime writers are good at creating detectives but flounder a little with their adversaries. Of course I could write on Moriarty, Flambeau and Count Fosco. And from the Golden Age I could talk of Doctor Bickleigh, Dimitrios, Jack Havoc, Elizabeth Kane and, a little later, Karla and Harry Lime – but where are today's villains? Are they as interesting? Their crimes are dastardly enough and as bloody as the distant Jacobeans, but few of the perpetrators other than Hannibal Lecter stand out in the public's memory. To test this, ask any reader. They may name someone from a book they've read recently or from something they've seen on television, but you won't see their eyes light up and hear them chat enthusiastically in the way non-crime readers do of Svengali and Sweeney Todd, Volpone and Varney the Vampire, Raffles and Rupert of Hentzau, Doctor Nikola and Doctor No, Fagin and Bill Sikes. Who today has invented a Long John Silver? Whatever happened to Mister Mist?
I found, to my surprise, that most of the greats came before the 20th century. The Jacobeans, of course, were brilliant: Alice and Mosbie, Bosola, Flamineo and Moll Cutpurse. Not to mention Sir Penitent Brothel. Think of the titles to their plays: The White Devil, The Revenger's Tragedy and The Duchess of Malfi: you know what sort of evening you're in for there. Shakepeare's villains are so well known there's no need for me to remind you of them – just as you'll remember the gothic splendour a little later from Lovelace, Ambrosio, Manfred and Montoni. Villains abound in Dickens – but in the 19th century he was not the onlie begetter of villains: Lady Audley, the Doone family, the original Flashman, the Black Monk, Mr Hyde – and of course, those supernatural megastars, Frankenstein, Dracula, Varney and Carmilla – not forgetting the professional writer's favourite villain, Jasper Milvain. I won't go on.
Why can't modern writers match these fabulous creations? I thought at first I could see the answer. Detectives grow over a series of books (or nowadays, TV shows) to become familiar to their public. Villains have only one crack and then they die (it being the accepted practice for the villain to be seen off at the end, on the pretence that crime does not pay). So a villain, no matter how bizarre, cruel or unusual, is too fleeting to become immortal. Except ... didn't many of those classic villains have only one crack too? In Jacobean drama it was practically a given that half the cast would be slaughtered at the end. Yet dead or not, we remembered them. Dickens never repeated a villain, and we never forgot a single one. Today's readers don't forget them either – and they must surely be crying out to crimewriters (or if they're not, they ought to be) to make up some truly splendid villains. Villains don't have to do a lot: that went out with the Jacobeans. Since then, well, that fellow Lovelace wrote a lot of letters, Quilp chased his debts and got the hots for a little girl, Heathcliff – though not everyone sees him as a villain – was little more than petulant, and Mr Hyde's villainy happened mostly off the page. But they – and all the other villains in my book – were characters. My challenge to crime writers today is create some more.
Incidentally, if you think you're well up on your villains, can you identify each of these?
1.The Scottish family who dined off the bodies of their victims
2.The villain with springs in his heels, devil's horns, and a coat of hair running down his back
3.The villain who could remould his face as if it were made of clay
4.The twentieth century's 'greatest fornicator of all time'.
Answers, of course, in GREAT BRITISH FICTIONAL VILLAINS by Russell James,
published September 2009 by Remember When (an imprint of Pen & Sword). The ISBN is 978 1844 680603 and the recommended price is £19.99 (though check for lower on the net!)
