MY
PRAISE, I hasten to clarify, is for the creators of the best villains of
fiction.
A recent discovery for me is Fallen
Angels, first published 1984
by Bernard Cornwell and his wife Susannah Kells.
When reprinted in 2018 Susannah’s
name was dropped from the authorship despite its narrative leaning to the
romance genre. But I suspect she invented the book’s most evil character. He is
a dashing cavalryman employed to woo and marry, and then murder, England
Or maybe not. John Ivor (in Run Maggie Run) has a
priestly pedophile ‘comforting’ a girl of 9 on the night before she is to be
hanged. Of course, she escapes both rape and hangman to undergo further perils
on her adventurous odyssey to womanhood. This is brilliantly written, like all
the most evil characters in the world of books.
There
are many such, and depicting them needs a talent beyond the numerous baddies in
popular fiction. Look at Shakespeare for a start. Of his many villains, I rate
the vilest to be Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus. He
arranges the killing of Lavinia’s
betrothed in front of her, just to horrify her, before rape, tongue cut out and
hands cut off. (So she can’t tell anyone).
Can
anything be more evil? Well, there’s the bloodsucking vampire Dracula,
by Bram Stoker. Or how about the demon barber, Sweeney Todd, who sliced customer’s throats before
disposing of their bodies as juicy meat pies. Author? Many men worked on this
penny-dreadful serial in Victorian London.
From the same era, Charles Dickens
created the sadistic burglar and killer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist.
Literature’s evildoers have been around
for thousands of years and they abound in all mythologies. Not so well known to
Western culture is Ravana, demon king in the Hindu epic Ramayana.
Find a translation; it is a great read with as many gripping tales as the
Bible.
In modern
times, we have the blood chilling Hannibal
Lector, by Thomas Harris. A respected doctor moonlights as a cannibalistic serial-killer.
In children’s books, Lord
Voldemort has been voted the most evil villain. He plagues
the Harry Potter series by JK
Rowling.
Mind
you, there are evil women in fiction also, but mentioning them might let a few
#metoo blokes off the hook. Am I being evil?
Happy
reading! from Cathy.
Pick
and click your fancy, all genres, at http://www.booktaste.com/BOOKS/books.html
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