The Criminal as Hero
By David Corbett | April 9, 2021 |
east of noir — Elisha Cook, Jr., and Marie Windsor in The Killing (1956), directed by Stanley Kubrick, dialogue by Jim Thompson — photo by Robert Couse-Baker
Although this post deals specifically with the crime fiction genre, it might prove informative for any of you working on stories with a main character who stands up against an oppressive or corrupt authority, crosses moral boundaries, or for any other reason challenges readers to think outside the comfort of standard ethical conventions.
An entire subgenre of crime fiction is premised on placing the wrongdoer in the role of protagonist, in both comic and dramatic modes. The moral calculus, rather than Good vs Bad as in much of crime fiction, more resembles Bad vs. Worse, and allows readers and audiences the vicarious thrill of empathizing, even identifying, with the outlaw, who faces an adversary even more committed to immorality than he is.
The techniques for depicting the criminal hero in stories of this kind differ from those of “justifying not judging” the villain/opponent largely in the emphasis placed on his redeeming qualities.
Virtues such as courage, intelligence, cleverness, loyalty, compassion, and fairness will move to the foreground, and his pursuit of crime will typically be justified on the grounds of desperation, irresistible temptation, rebellion against a corrupt or conformist system, loyalty to a culture or brotherhood, a blue-collar/lunch-pail commitment to the job, or a professional’s pursuit of an almost artistic excellence.
This is by no means an absolute. For proof, look no further that the enduringly popular Ripley novels of Patricia Highsmith with the psychopathic chameleon Tom Ripley as their protagonist. It is Highsmith’s signature genius that she not only invites the reader to root for her reprehensible hero but succeeds in doing so.
Stories that employ a criminal hero tend to fall into one the following five categories, though the line between them is often blurred:
The Caper
This story type usually focuses on an elaborate or sophisticated heist. The fact that the crime involves money but is not intentionally or needlessly violent often defuses the reader’s or audience’s resistance to identifying with the criminals. We all have a little larceny in our hearts, the thinking goes.
The complications arise not just from the threat of police detection of the scheme or reprisal from its target, but from betrayal by one’s own accomplices due to the untrustworthiness and suspicion among the criminals themselves or their associates.
The classic films Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, both featuring Sterling Hayden, provide the template, with Michael Mann’s Thief another prime example.
The British seem particularly adept at this genre, with mid-century examples such Nowhere to Go, The League of Gentlemen, and Cash on Demand as well as 1987’s brilliant Bellman and True (based on the equally superb novel by Desmond Lowden) and 21st century representatives Sexy Beast and The Bank Job among many others.
The criminal in such stories is often devoted to excellence—and risk—in a way that others in the society are not. In a very fundamental way, the criminal in such stories is a stand-in for the rebel or the artist. He does not target the innocent but the corrupt, the greedy, the unjustly enriched.
The protagonist may be largely a solo operator, as in both versions of The Thomas Crowne Affair, where the fiendishly clever protagonist targets insurers as part of an elaboriate cat-and-mouse gane. The aforementioned Ripley novels also fall into this categroy, with the protagonist pursuing elaborate schemes to take advantage of the snobbish vanity of his upper-crust marks in order to insinuate himself into their society, the better to enjoy the worldly lifestyle they consider their right—and to prey upon them.
Contrarily, the criminal hero may lead a group of associates each with his own expertise, as in the Oceans 11 franchise. This story type is expecially plot-driven, as it usually develops that, despite the best of plans, something goes terribly wrong, and the great fun of the story is watching the experts improvise given their individual skills.
This kind of story is often dealt with humorously, as in the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels of Lawrence Block, and both the Dortmunder novels of Donald Westlake and the Parker novels he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark.
But it can also be intensely gritty, as in Richard Marinick’s Boyos and George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, both of which portray the criminal hero as a kind of blue-collar working stiff whose turn to crime is motivated largely by the rough-and-tumble culture in which he lives, where any strategy to maximize one’s own advantage is seen as legitimate.
It can also be extremely poignant, like Federico Fellini’s Il Bidone, in which a small-time hustler in post-war Italy launches a scheme against his hustler confederates to help his daughter pay for school.
The Professional
A descendant of the dark knight, the plains gunman, and the samurai or ronin, this protagonist type possesses a particularly unique expertise that normally conjoins with a moral code the reader or audience finds laudable (or at least acceptable), though that is not always the case, especially in its darker incarnations.
The hitman or assassin hero is one example. He is typically a true lone wolf, hired by some secretive intelligence agency, criminal enterprise, or wealthy individual to neutralize someone in such a way that the murder cannot be traced back to its true source. Often, the client proves as untrustworthy and potentially dangerous as whatever enemy cabal, terrorist cell, mob, law enforcement body, or spy agency comes after the assassin in the wake of the job.
Lawrence Block’s Keller novels and Barry Eisler’s John Rain series exemplify the genre, as does the postmodernist La Position du tireur couché (The Prone Gunman) by Jean-Patrick Manchette. Another variant is Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, which features a surveillance expert, not a killer.
John D. MacDonald created in Travis McGee a “salvage consultant” who locates and returns “misplaced” property to its lawful if morally compromised owners, who lost it or had it stolen under clouded circumstances, thus eliminating the option of going to the police. George Pelecanos has resurrected this format with his novels featuring Iraq War veteran Spero Lucas, who similarly retrieves missing property from those too embarrassed or too compromised to seek lawful assistance.
The Transporter series featuring former special forces operative Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is another example; here the professional’s specialty emphasizes his driving, but his combat skills inevitably come into play as well.
The unifying theme in all of these examples is the dedicated professional with exceptional aptitude in a specialized if shadowy métier. His chosen field, though dubiosuly ethical if not outright illegal, is also very much in demand, and his talents are enviable to any reader or audience member who sees the world as dark, duplicitous, and dangerous and wishes they could navigate it with the same accomplished panache.
The Outlaw
In contrast to the lone-wolf Professional, this protagonist type often leads a gang of like-minded misfits, similar to his legendary progenitor Robin Hood or Old West counterparts such as Jesse James and Butch Cassidy, and such Depression era folk heroes as Pretty Boy Floyd or Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He usually stands in contrast to corrupt authority, which forms the premise of the subgenre’s Bad vs. Worse ethos.
In the film Hell or High Water (screenplay by Taylor Sheridan), brothers Toby and Tanner Howard take to robbing branches of the bank that is trying to foreclose on their family ranch. The underlying debt was caused by a reverse mortgage their mother needed to survive during a prolonged terminal illness. Toby is aware that oil has been found on the property, and hopes to save it in time to leave that wealth to his sons. As the brothers conduct their robberies they are pursued by two Texas rangers with an almost antiquated down-to-earth decency, and that standoff forms a strong moral conflict between adversaries each of whom seems justified in his own unique way.
One often finds a similar setup in heist and caper stories such as the ones mentioned earlier. Complex heists invariably require a cunning leader and a crew of skilled technicians, from drivers to explosives experts to safe crackers to fences, and the target is almost always considered corrupt in one sense or another—casinos, banks, politicians, other criminals.
In The Bank Job, the robbery crew, which is largely manned by small-time thieves, finds itself up against not just cops on the take but compromised politicians—including Princess Margaret—MI5 operatives, and exceedingly violent gangsters, all of whom are after what the crew discovered in the safe deposit boxes they managed to steal.
Several other recent examples of this subgenre, by raising the moral status of the law enforcement/authority figure adversary, turn the Bad vs. Worse calculus toward the hero’s criminal associates, making them the true villains.
Richard Price’s Clockers raised the bar for an entire generation of crime writers by placing both the detective, Rocco Klein, and the suspect, street cocaine dealer Strike Dunham, on equal moral footing. Strike was portrayed sympathetically, as someone whose only path to real money lay in the crack trade, and he was paying for his choice with chronic ulcers and increasingly violent pressure from his supplier, Rodney Little.
In Michael Mann’s Heat, criminal mastermind Neal McCauley’s intelligence, bravado, loyalty to his crew, and commitment to excellence serve to elevate his moral standing. His betrayal at the hands of a cutthroat criminal turns the Bad vs. Worse balance in his favor, even as we root not just for him but his law enforcement adversary, Lt. Hanna, who ultimately brings him to justice.
In Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves, which was the source for the film in The Town, Doug McRay leads a top-flight armored car robbery crew comprised of fellow South Boston roughnecks who view the law as a protection racket for the rich. McRay, though, has ambitions to leave his criminal life behind, which puts him at odds both with his criminal overseers and his chief lieutenant and longtime friend, Jimmy Coughlin. He meets his match in the equally competent and aggressive FBI agent Adam Frawley, but it’s his criminal associates who pose the greater threat.
The Gangster
Like the Outlaw, this criminal hero exists in a social element, but that element is usually culturally or ethnically defined, such as Chinese triads, the Japanese yakuza, the Irish mob, the Italian La Cosa Nostra, the Russian Mafiya, motorcycle gangs such as Hells Angels, and Latino and African-American street gangs.
The moral ambiguity and larger-than-life characters typical of this subgenre allow for some truly great dramatic portrayals, as revealed in the films of Martin Scorsese and the Godfather franchise, TV shows such as The Sopranos and The Wire, the novels Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game and Legs by William Kennedy, and the Joe Coughlin novels of Dennis Lehane. The other appeal of these stories is their depiction of a cultural milieu normally closed to outsiders.
The term “defiant individualism” was used to describe gang membership by sociologist Martin Sanchez-Jankowski in his book Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society. He described how the decision to join a gang was normally motivated by the individual’s belief that gang membership could help maximize his own personal goals by providing protection, support, and income in an environment that was otherwise typically hostile, solitary, and impoverished. He viewed the gang as his best opportunity to succeed in the face of an oppressive social, cultural, and economic system—thus the “defiance” element in the terminology.
Although Henry Hill described being a gangster in the Italian mob as glamorous, exciting, and fun in his memoir Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, he also described the sense of mutual obligation and respect demanded of everyone in the crew—a code he ended up violating by turning informant.
Another particularly noteworthy example is the Chechenskaya bratva or “Chechen brotherhood” in Russia. Its roots lie in the traditional figure of the abrek, a quasi-mythical “Caucasus Robin Hood” whose banditry is seen as a form of honorable vengeance against corrupt authority—especially in the form of the Russian regime, which has historically oppressed Chechnya. An ethos of self-sufficiency combines with an almost maniacal devotion to violence as the individual criminals form ad hoc gangs to pull off daring capers and raids against the rich and powerful for the benefit of the less advantaged, with special focus on targeting their rivals in the Russian underworld.
Stories featuring such criminals in the protagonist role show how the defiant individualist views the world at large as hostile to his interests, but also sees membership in his group as the best means to maximize his own personal efforts at success. This group mentality typically generates a moral code for members within the group, emphasizing loyalty, obedience, courage, and a certain selflessness, with behavior toward those outside the group largely unchecked except to the extent it affects the group. The killing by gang members of police officers or “civilians,” for example, is generally considered off-limits not because of the harm it causes to those individuals but because of the enhanced scrutiny from law enforcement such predation will create. In contrast, attacks against rival gang members are not only condoned but encouraged, the more punitive the better.
In contrast to the utterly self-involved psychopath, the gang member combines a sense of general injustice with group allegiance in justifying whatever harm he inflicts on others. If his actions on behalf of the group betray his individual morality, he may tell himself that “the pathway to heaven lies through hell.”
Noir
The term “noir” gets used so broadly and vaguely it’s sometimes hard to know what does or doesn’t qualify:
- Novelist Jim Nisbet, a great practitioner of the form, defines it this way: “In noir, the protagonist is totally screwed on page one and it just goes downhill from there.”
- San Francisco film reviewer Mick LaSalle describes it as any story where the protagonist attempts to take some meaningful action in the face of overwhelming conformity and/or corruption.
- Dennis Lehane likens it to “blue-collar tragedy,” contrasting the humble and morally dubious hero to Aristotle’s “pre-eminent man.” This reflects the fact that the ethos in these stories owes a distinct debt to the tales of the underclass championed by Naturalist writers such as Jack London, Frank Norris, Theodore Dresier, and dramatists such as Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets.
What I mean here by “noir” is any story with a morally ambiguous protagonist who is not by profession a criminal, but who nonetheless pursues a questionable if not blatantly illegal goal. The tone of such stories is one of pathos, where we have a pretty keen sense the story will not end well because the hero is up against an overwhelming adversary or an all-powerful force such as luck, fate, or “the system.”
Such stories can be divided into three main categories: those with a lawman protagonist, those with a criminal protagonist, and those with a “civilian” protagonist.
The lawman subgenre blends elements of both noir and the hard-boiled police detective sub-genre. It’s essentially a much darker version of the latter, with amoral, immoral, substance-dependent, or openly psychotic protagonists with a badge.
Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 provide chilling psychological portraits of the psychopath as cop. Chester Himes’ Harlem series is brilliant and too often overlooked. More recently James Ellroy in the U.S. and Derek Raymond in Britain have carried the banner.
The latest and perhaps greatest example of the genre, however, is Don Winslow’s The Force, about an elite police unit operating in Harlem that step by step descends into the same level of corruption and criminality as the mobsters, drug dealers, and madams they’re supposed to be investigating.
When the protagonist is a criminal, he typically lacks the skill of the Professional and the group support of the Outlaw or Gangster. He’s an immoral everyman on his own, with no allies to call upon beyond at most a sidekick or a girlfriend—or the ever-helpful “kid or a dog,” to elicit empathy.
As for the civilian category, the hero generally finds himself in some sort of desperate situation, or is tempted into one by an opportunity that seems too good to pass up. The lure of sex or money routinely leads to violence, betrayal, and death.
Cornell Woolrich and James M. Cain perfected the form in the 1930s, with Jim Thompson and David Goodis continuing the tradition in the 1950s. An entire genre of film carries this banner, with Jules Dassin’s Night and the City, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (based on the Cain novel) and Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street three of its most stellar examples.
A neo-noir revival in the 1960s and 1970s provided us with a new crop of such films, including Dog Day Afternoon, Scarecrow, and Mickey One, with later films such as Body Heat, The Last Seduction, Memento, El Aura, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead continuing the tradition.
If you’re writing in the crime genre and are considering using a criminal as your protagonist, which of the subgenres just discussed appeals to you the most? Why?
- The Caper
- The Professional
- The Outlaw
- The Gangster
- Noir
Have you tried your hand at any of these? What challenges did you face—specifically, how did you overcome the reader’s moral resistance to the criminal as hero?
If you’re not working within the crime genre but are working with main characters who test or violate the acceptable boundaries of conventional morality, did any of the subgenres discusses help you think through the problem of overcoming the reader’s resistance to your character’s immorality?
In any event, please feel free to chime in however you see fit.
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
What an interesting summary, David. Thank you for that. I have already written a dual timeline novel (historical/contemporary) with a gangster as the historical protagonist and enjoyed doing so. The gangster is very loosely based on someone I knew when I lived on Florida’s Gold Coast. At the time, much of the beach front property and activity was controlled by Italian and Jewish mobsters. That little peek into the lifestyle and how the relationships functioned was rather fascinating to observe from the outside. Miami Days Havana Nights is the result of my fascination with my well-connected acquaintance. While it’s fun to write, I wouldn’t want to live it, of course!
Hi, Linda:
That mob connection in Florida is one of the most fascinating in the country. You’re in excellent company depicting it — Dennis Lehane does as well especially in his final Joe Coughlin novel, Wolrd Gone By. And not so long ago Boca Raton was considered the White Collar Crime capitol of the world. Very rich vein of material. Fortunate you got a glimpse of that world — and didn’t get sucked in! Thanks for commenting!
I love the Thomas Crowne Affair. That movie totally turned my world upside down because I knew I shouldn’t be rooting for him, but I just couldn’t help it.
Loki (in the movies – I’ve not read the comic books) is close to this phenomena in the Marvel movies, but he’s never been the main protagonist. I’m very much looking forward to the Disney+ plus series in June, because he’s finally getting to be in the spotlight.
I had to think about it, but in my second fantasy I kind of do a bait and switch regarding my antagonist. The “first” antagonist appears to be the Fairy King, and he is the kind of person where the end justifies the means, he’s sharp and condescending and generally unlikeable. By the end of the book you definitely feel affection for the guy and my heart always breaks for him in his final scene with my protagonist. Going back and finishing his story in the next book is on my to do list, not for any reason but I feel like he needs some peace. I was writing the story around the time of Thor: The Dark World and I wonder how much Loki influenced me while writing. The real antagonist in the story is just a power hungry nut-case…
I do think a key component in developing a reader’s sympathy for the Fairy King was drawing a firm picture that while his actions may be criminal, his motivations are pure (or mostly pure…) I threw in a little vulnerability and he definitely became one of the more interesting, complex characters of the story.
Hi, Lara:
The old pagan stories didn’t bother as much with “likability” as we tend to do now. The gods were far more mrecurial, epseically in Celtic and Teutonic mythology. Loki, a classic trickster, is much like Manannán Mac Lir in the old Irish stories, “one day I am sweet, one day I am bitter.” And boy, did they mean bitter.
By mixing moral with immoral actions, or combining immoral acts with a moral motivation, you immediately create a contradiction, one of the key ways to create complexity.
It’s precisely in the motivations that you can “redeem” a character whose actions appear immoral. The faux femme fatale characters Vivian Sternwood in The Big Sleep and Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown both seem to be guilty as sin but it’s ultimately revealed they’re acting to protect someone, and turn out to be the most morally grounded characters in the story.
Another of my favorite examples is Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon. Yeah, he’s robbing a bank, but he’s doing it so he can pay for the sex-change operation of his girlfriend. The phone conversation where he tries to explain economic hardship with a reporter asking, “Why don’t you just get a job?”, is one of the key moments of the film. Some of the bank tellers he’s holding hostage realize he recognizes their own shaky financial circumstances and begin to come over to his side.
Thanks for chiming in.
Yay! Someone else who sees the wonderful complexities of Loki’s arc (at least in the first two movies and the first Avengers – I wasn’t impressed with Ragnarok) and may have been influenced by this. Granted in my case this showed itself more in my interest of exploring scapegoating and less socially accepted responses to abuse in my own writing (also fantasy).
The bits you share about your book make it sound awesome!
To live outside the law is a human desire. Couple that with doing good by doing bad and the allure of such stories is clear.
In a way, I wonder if the last four years in our nation’s history was not, for millions of Americans, exactly that fantasy played out in reality: a huckster hero standing up against a contemptible establishment.
Your parsing of the varieties of criminal heroes is simply awesome, David. I hadn’t realIzed just how wide and deep this type of story runs. It’s obviously a story pattern we have to take seriously. It reflects a fundamental aspect of human nature.
“To live outside the law is a human desire.” That’s a fascinating thought. Funny, but I’d never considered it in such universal terms. It explains so much — from larceny to flying dreams.
It also points to so much of what can go haywire under the banner of “liberty.” To live free of constraint — how to get there? Privilege can’t be stolen, and it’s hard to fake: ask Jay Gatsby. So it’s got to be either money or power. And power outside the realm of wealth is either political or comes at the end of a gun barrel.
Which leads me to the other fascinating insight in your comment, the one concerning the past four years. I agree that the appeal of the former president was his antagonism toward what many people believe is illegitimate authority. This is classic populism, but the recruitment of violence in its cause nudged the movement into much darker territory. Sadly, as we’ve seen, hardly anyone on that side is condemning that violence for more than an eyeblink. Rather, the violence, along with the voting restrictions being enacted, are all in service to the same belief, that the “wrong people” are in charage, and “extremism in the name of liberty is no vice.”
If I had to identify a novel that captured those four years best, I’d probably pick All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. Though if I had to pick a crime novel, Hammett’s Red Harvest comes to mind.
Thanks as always for adding your thoughts.
Robert Penn Warren is not read nearly enough nowadays. Have you read At Heaven’s Gate? It’s another one with eerie parallels to our own times.
He was a considerable poet too, of course, and I see that he co-wrote a book on writing, which I’ll have to track down.
Agreed. RPW should not be forgotten. No, I’ve not read At Heaven’s Gate, but I do know his poetry. This one is a favorite:
True Love
Robert Penn Warren – 1905-1989
In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,
Freckled. In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something
Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It
Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.
How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me. She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.
Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.
Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.
He never came down. They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.
When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were
Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought
I would cry. I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.
The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.
But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn’t even know she knew it.
Once you can switch over to the ‘Why not me?’ ethos, it provides justifications for almost any behavior – and all these techniques give life and depth to the villain in a story, too.
In my mainstream trilogy, a beautiful actress realizes Hollywood thinks she has the shelf-life of milk, and decides to take matters into her own hands – her justification is that if someone is going to get what she wants, there’s no reason it can’t be her.
That’s brilliant, Alicia. “Why not me?” It’s so much sunnier than its shadowy twin, “Why them?” Because it’s precisely when that latter question takes the foreground that underhanded means inevitably arise to serve the seemingly admiirable ends. When does ambition cross the lines of morality? That’s an eternal theme.
I’m delighted by your post, and that you mention Patricia Highsmith. Genius for creating such a diabolical character that we feel sympathy for. The Talented Mr. Ripley was required reading for my research in developing the protagonist of my novel, The Sleeping Serpent. The character shares many characteristics with Ripley. Nico in the Sleeping Serpent craves admiration and success. And blames others for his inability to achieve greatness. He, like Ripley, lacks a strong sense of identity. I’ve used inner dialog to try and capture his sense of inadequacy and yearning to evoke sympathy in the reader. Thank you for this post!
by the way, there is a group read of The Talented Mr. Ripley on New York Time – T Magazine – Book Club
The truly terrifying thing about Tom Ripley is that there is no there there. He’s like an onion–keep peeling and peeling until suddenly you find it’s all gone. There’s nothing there. Just layers of deceit and subterfuge.
Highsmith said he was not a psychopath — It’s her character, but I disagree. Ripley was so empty inside. And I love that you describe him as an onion. He had no sense of self and needed to secure that by adopting the identity of others. I did not read any of the sequels. Just the one original title. She says he wasn’t a psychopath because she says he didn’t like to kill, but needed to do it. That’s pretty interesting. I guess the diagnosis isn’t important. He killed to protect his false identity because without that identity he would again be nothing. An empty shell. Or an onion!!! The fear of going back to being nothing was too much for him to bare. I never diagnosed Nico — just gave him a personality that was seriously sorrowful, with an echoing emptiness and a disordered personality. Controlling, manipulative, filled with sorrow, yearning, and rage when he felt betrayed and/or abandoned. I’ve just finished the first draft of the sequel and working on edits in the second pass now. Deeping the character as I read it again.
Great breakdown of the not-so-good protagonist! I’m curious where you’d put Hannibal Lecter in this schema. The Professional, perhaps, since he worked to a specific code? To wit, he only killed (and okay, also ate) the rude, a philosophy that’s not entirely without merit.
I’m also impressed when authors can have characters switch functions from one book to the next. Lecter is again a great example, ranging from the super-scary villain (or one of them, at least) in Silence of the Lambs, then becoming the protagonist facing some even ickier people in Hannibal. Anne Rice pulled off that same trick with her vampire character Lestat – villain in at least one book, hero in others.
I think part of the appeal of criminal characters to me is that they find a way – legal or not – to get the thing they care about DONE – something that can range from hard to impossible for law-abiding folks. In a world where the evidence of karma is scant, there’s something empowering about watching smart, driven people do whatever it takes to accomplish their goal, often serving up a significant dose of justice in the process. So there’s definitely a wish-fulfillment button getting pressed…
Ever read any of Andrew Vachss’s “Burke” novels? I love that character, and the ensemble with whom he works. Although all of them are criminals, their code of honor is so deep and steadfast – you find yourself wishing you had a similar band of thieves.
Anyhoo, thanks for making us think. I’m just wading into a story idea that will feature numerous bad guys, so I’ll be referring back to this as I get in deeper.
Hey, Keith:
Andrew Vachss should be much more of a household name, but even his publishers are scared of him–not personally. The darkness of his stories scares them. But he’s one of the most innovative writers in the crime genre in my generation.
Having a serial killer protagonist was unthinkable before Thomas Harris humanized Hannibal Lecter. Because most real serial killers are truly horrifying people. By making Hannibal a mentor to Clarice — the dark twin to her FBI profiler boss — Harris used one of the most reliable tricks in the business: he gave the reprehensible character “a kid or a dog,” i.e., he showed Hannibal helping someone. Even though he was utterly self-interested in doing so, the assistance was real. And at the end of the film, he remarks that he does not want to kill her, because the world would be a darker place without her in it.
To make him a hero, however, you have to use the other trick I mentioned: emphasize the moral calculus of Bad vs. Worse. Same with Dexter. Their “code” allows them to kill but only those whose evil exceeds their own. I think this is clearer with Dexter than Hannibal, who sometimes strays into purely self-indulgent mayhem just for, as they say, the hell of it.
Mentioning Hannibal in the same vein as Lestat brings up another trick: make the villain sexy. Vampires are popular because they’re erotic. They are also usually highly intelligent. They often represent a fading aristocracy–I’ve sometimes wondered how long it will take before someone writes a book or script in which the Bedford Forrest, founder of the Klan, is portrayed as a vampire.
The ability to turn a villain in one book into a hero in another speaks preceisly to that admiration you expressed for characters who just get s**t done. We understand that sometimes you have to do what must be done, not what should be done.
In his novel The Chain, Adrian McKinty has his protagonist run through the three major ethical systems in Western philosphy–Aristotelean virtue ethics, Kantian idealism, and Utilitarianism–in an attempt to find a moral way out of her terrible situation (her daughter has been kidnapped and will only be released when she, the mother, kidnaps someone else’s child). She ultimately realizes she can’t abide by any of those moral systems and has to instead go rogue.
Fun stuff. If you ever want to toss some ideas around concerning your new project, feel free.
Thought-provoking summary….could add Dexter to that list too.
In reading the listings here, one thing stands out like a sore thumb to me. There are no women protagonists. Besides Bonnie as Clyde’s sidekick, and although women, like the sick mother who mortgaged her home during an illness that her sons need to correct, can be a catalyst, they seem to seldom figure much in these tales. What about a League of Extraordinary Ladies?
Is the genre sexist or the age it came into being?
Recently though, there have been female versions of the genre like the acclaimed series Killing Eve and the female sequel to the Ocean’s 11 franchise…
Hi, Bernadette:
I think the problem is more my examples than the genre. The Last Seduction has a femme female main character though I’m not sure you’d call her the protagonist. And I think Bonnie Parker qualifies as more than a sidekick. The film is titled Bonnie & Clyde, after all, not Clyde & Bride.
Megan Abbott has developed an entire ouevre premised on the darker side of the American female. Queenpin is a great example of that. Chelsea Cain has a female serial killer as one of her leads. Killing Eve is a great example of a woman as assassin, as is the Femme Nikita franchise. The recent miniseries ZEROZEROZERO has a woman taking over for her murdered father in supplying precursor chemicals to a Mexican cartel. Molly’s Game (directed by Aaron Sorkin) has a woman as Professional–in this instance, the criminal enterprise is gambling. The TV series Queen of the South has a woman protagonist in the role of Gangster. And the TV series Good Girls is very much in the Noir category, where three women take up robbery to pay the bills … and things happen.
Gone Girl doesn’t fit neatly into any of the categories I’ve listed; it’s more psychological suspense, which is a field women arguably have owned since Ruth Rendall. But having a woman as perpetrator rather than the husband worked precisely because it defied expectation, which is exactly what the woman main character relied upon for her scheme.
I don’t think the crime genre is any more sexist than anything else that’s come out of publishing or Hollywood. In fact I think strong women characters show up quite a bit in the genre. This phenomenon of women playing the criminal — rather than the more morally acceptable role of cop or victim — is, indeed, somewhat recent. Lynda La Plante really kicked it into gear in the mid-1980s with Widows, a miniseries that was recently remade as a film starring Viola Davis and written by director Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn.
The problem, as noted, is that I need to update my examples to reflect that change. My apologies on that score.
Thank you for the thought-provoking post. It instantly brought to mind things I’ve read and watched that draw on or overlap with these concepts.
At the moment I’m watching Black Sails (on the second to last season), and, as a show where most of the protagonists are pirates, it definitely crosses some moral assumptions. It manages to make you care about some truly not good people (Charles Vane), while also setting up some characters who do some truly horrifying things as better than the alternative and very sympathetic (James Flint vs England – I challenge anyone to watch this show and not come down on Flint’s side in spite of some of the more awful things he does (granted, I may be biased due to my perception of colonizing societies, as well as being queer and someone who would have likely found myself in a bad situation in Victorian London)).
I write fantasy, not crime fiction, but I definitely end up playing with some of these concepts. One of the series I’m working on at the moment follows a few different people who have been alienated or rejected by their society – the one I’ve sorted the most details for was already pushed to the margins of society and became full on reviled for deserting in a war-centric culture. I personally find desertion (depending on reasons) admirable, but I know that’s quite taboo in my country (the US), and many people would find that to be crossing a line, so working to challenge people’s perceptions around that in my writing without telling the reader what to think or creating strawmen should be a fun line to tread.
My wife and I are HUGE fans of Black Sails. We’ve watched the entire series twice and recently discussed giving it a third turn.
I agree with you on all points, especially Charles Vane and Flint. Pirates share very tangible similarities to both Outlaws and Gangsters, depending on the racial/ethnic makeup of the crew. There is an element of rebellion, not just thievery and pillage, to the best stories, without prettying up the otherwise grim overall picture.
A deserter as hero or a main character seems like a great way to challenge received notions about the legitimate purpose(s) of a given conflict and the sentimental attraction to glory that many who have never fought (and no small number of those who have) retain. I think the more you make the reason for his desertion principle rather than cowardice, the stronger his case will be to be accepted for who he is, not who others want him to be to gratfiy their hatred and desire for revenge. But you will make him more complex, and more fascinating, if you add that element of fear, and have him wrestle with that–Did I really desert because I lost faith in the cause, or is that just what I tell myself so I don’t have to face the truth?
Sounds fascinating. Good luck!
I’ve been binge watching “The Black List”. If there ever was an enigmatic scofflaw you can love and hate at the same time, it’s James Spader’s portrayal of Raymond Reddington. A fascinating character. Evil, urbane, witty, clever, mysterious. Fascinating!