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Helpful hints to make your readers hate your villain. Murder mysteries and suspense thrillers thrive on tension and conflict to move the story. In past newsletters I've focused on plotting and character development. To "hook" the reader the villain should appear early in the book. Oftentimes, these characters take on a persona that relates to an entire industry. For example, in High Rise, the Boston surgeon gone crazy because of managed care killing his practice goes on a killing rampage using hired assassins to go after managed care executives. In the Protocol, Appleton is the research psychiatrist with a zest for living on the edge with sexual hang-ups that drive him to outwit the police and larger research community. In Symbiosis, a serial killer is hell-bent to prove his mother wrong about his ineffectual character flaws coupled with envy and vengeance. In Night Moves, bad doctors to outwit the FDA for financial gain.
In all good mystery thrillers the primary tension is good versus evil. The more subtle the conflict, the more the reader can identify with both characters, and internalize the fine line between right and wrong. Many of my "villains" are drawn from established professions: police, doctors, financial executives, corporate America, and government. Carl Jung, a famous psychoanalyst, posited that in each of us is the potential for good and evil. The "dark" side in us is that which we try to hide from others, but it seeps up in tension-filled situations fueled by greed, envy, deceit, entitlement, and revenge.
I attempt to humanize my antagonists so that my readers can identify with their motives and say to themselves: "I don't approve, but at least I can understand why he did what he did." Grisham's bestsellers are based on this premise, especially his first novel, A Time to Kill. Who wouldn't want to kill the murderer of one's daughter?
Besides people, the antagonist can be an institution—e.g. mental health care, as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the legal profession (Grisham's books), government (Baldacci's books, especially, Total Control), or James Patterson North's, To Protect and Defend, about the politics of picking a supreme court justice. We've come a long way since the "cop and robber" days with more action sequencing and the advancements in forensic medicine. Evidence gathering is more detailed and scientific, leaving less room for "hunches." The British spy thrillers or "cozies" as they are called tend to be more cerebral in finding the antagonist. Agatha Christi was (and still is) the mistress of suspense.
The anti-hero is "good gone bad" and also makes for a tension-filled drama. The psychiatrist in my medical thriller, The Protocol, is seduced by greed and his own sexual addiction. Even more tension is produced when the villain outwits the protagonist and makes for a sure sequel (who wouldn't want to kill the bad guy eventually). This formula has been successful for many writers and forces the reader to identify with the villain. To pull this off requires more psychological profiling and background narrative, and often runs the risk of slowing down the pace and reducing the tension. In my opinion the sine qua non is Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein, in which the doctor creates a monster in a masterfully crafted reversal of protagonist and antagonist—e.g. the doctor becoming evil and the monster assuming human emotions of caring and remorse towards his victims, and revenge against his creator.
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