Killers Who Refuse to Die

Sandra Parshall

Oh, how I hated to see Nicole Wallace go. She was such a bitch, and evil right down to her toes. I loved her.

Nicole, played by the wonderful Olivia d’Abo, was the only villain who’d ever outwitted the brilliant Bobby Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. And Bobby was the only man who ever wandered into this poisonous spider’s web and lived to tell about it. They were perfectly matched. She should have gone on forever, making well-timed return appearances in Goren’s world. But last Sunday night she died, in a peculiarly unsatisfying fashion – not in a confrontation with Goren, but offstage, at the hand of another twisted soul who thought he was doing Goren a favor. Since we didn’t actually see her die, and we all know that on TV shows DNA results aren’t necessarily final, I hold out hope that we haven’t lost one of the crime genre’s creepiest and most fascinating recurring villains.

The majority of crime novels and all of television’s crime dramas are built around recurring heroes or heroines, but the villain who refuses to die and keeps popping up again and again seems to have fallen out of favor with most writers. The few authors who attempt such characters don’t always handle them well.

The most famous recurring villain in mystery fiction is Professor Moriarty, who tested Sherlock Holmes’s skills many times, and disappeared over Reichenbach Falls while locked in combat with the great detective. That was supposed to be the end of both of them, but readers wouldn’t let Arthur Conan Doyle get away with it.

Hannibal Lecter was a charismatic recurring villain until his creator decided to explain what made him the way he was. In the novel Hannibal, we were asked to believe that seeing enemy soliders make a meal of his little sister awakened Hannibal’s own appetite for human flesh. In fiction as in real life, there is such a thing as Too Much Information. I have no interest in ever reading about Hannibal again.

Chelsea Cain has created a female version of Hannibal in Heartsick and her upcoming book, Sweetheart. Her beautiful serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, is in prison, and Detective Archie Sheridan is the one victim who escaped before she got around to cutting out his heart, but he can’t shake off the psychological hold she has on him any more than Clarice Starling can rid herself of Hannibal Lecter.

On TV, Gil Grissom of CSI spent a couple of seasons pursuing a killer who created miniature replicas of her crime scenes before she actually committed the murders. An intriguing premise, but the killer, when she was tracked down, was sadly disappointing and unworthy of the long buildup.

The Joker in the Batman stories finally got an actor capable of playing him in all his twisted glory when Heath Ledger took on the part for The Dark Knight. Ledger’s performance is the only thing worth watching in that film. He made The Joker sick and menacing and genuinely scary, and his future portrayals of the character are among the many brilliant performances we will never see from this talented man who died too young.

One of my favorite recurring killers in crime fiction was the female contract assassin pursued by Lucas Davenport in a couple of John Sandford’s Prey novels. She wasn’t Lucas’s equal – who is, after all? – but she came close, and I was sorry to see her die.

Patricia Cornwell was quite a bit less successful in creating her own recurring villain. The French “werewolf” who bedeviled Kay Scarpetta (she insisted on calling him le loup garou) was alternately laughable and disgusting, but never believable. Without believability, a killer isn’t going to be frightening.

James Patterson did somewhat better with the determined killer who went after Alex Cross and his family more than once, but the overall quality of the stories wasn’t high enough to allow the character to shine.

There are a few more, but even the complete list of continuing villains in modern crime fiction is sadly skimpy. Why don’t more writers attempt to write recurring villains? Are they afraid to show their heroes and heroines as fallible beings who don’t always close the case? Or have they simply bowed to the marketing notion that every book must be self-contained?

What would make you kill?

Sandra Parshall



I’m baffled by people like Scott Peterson, who think murdering a spouse is the easiest way to end a marriage.


I always look for more, thinking the simple desire to get out of the marriage can’t be all there is to it. Surely some dark and twisted story remains to be told, surely secrets will emerge that might make the murder understandable, if not justifiable. But no. In many cases, the husband – or the wife – just wants to be free and doesn’t want to bother with a divorce.


I couldn’t write about such a killer, because the motive makes no sense to me. The person who kills in a fit of rage is easier to understand than these bland people who plot and carry out murder for the flimsiest of reasons. There’s simply nothing there to explore.


Equally off-putting are psychopathic serial killers. Judging by the popularity of this type of book, I’d say mental illness makes good drama for a lot of people, but I can only stay interested in a serial killer novel if the people investigating the crimes are compelling, with their own fascinating stories. A mentally ill murderer’s motive is imaginary, unconnected to the real world, and for that reason, it bores me.


Strange as it may seem, I need a killer I can identify with. Someone I can understand. And that forces me to ask: What is worth killing for? What could make me take another person’s life?


Not an easy question for someone who is basically a pacifist and a physical coward. I seldom see any justification for war. I might get mad enough to say, “I could strangle her!” but I’d never do it. As a kid on a farm, I was always horrified by the casual way adults wrung the necks of chickens. When I find bugs in the house, I usually pick them up and put them outside. But... I kill spiders. I leave them alone if they’re in the yard, but any spider that’s in the house or even hanging around outside a door or window will be mercilessly dispatched. And I’m sure that in some circumstances I could kill another human being.


Self-defense – most of us probably take it for granted that we would kill rather than be killed. Even if the thought of taking a life repulses us, we know the instinct for self-preservation would kick in.


I would kill to save a child, any child. Could I do it to save an adult? I have to admit I’m not sure. The most honest answer: Depends on who it is and what he or she means to me. But I wouldn’t hesitate to inflict grievous bodily harm, at the very least, to stop the torture of an animal.


To create a killer I can write about convincingly, I have to find that dark place where my own murderous impulses hide. I have to pull them into the light, examine the forces that created them, and weave my character’s heart and soul around them. I have to understand my killer’s behavior, and at some level I have to empathize with it. I hope I can also make the reader feel a spark of pity for this person who has been pushed by life into the role of killer.


Writing with these goals isn’t easy, and it makes for some treacherously complex plotting, but working with a simplistic killer would be so boring that I would probably give up long before I could finish the book. Same goes for reading about killers with motives that seem ridiculous to me. If a character is going to commit murder, he’d better have a darned good reason.


How do you feel about this? Do you want fictional killers to have understandable motives that arise from their unique situations? Do you ever feel empathy or pity for a killer?


And what would make you kill?

The Invisible Villain

Sandra Parshall

“I knew who the killer was the first time I saw him.”

That’s probably the most common complaint I hear about crime fiction, and it’s often followed by either “It ruined the story for me” or, even more alarming to a writer, “As soon as I knew whodunnit, I stopped reading. What was the point of going on?”

I don’t fully understand this attitude. I figure out who the villain is fairly early in at least 75% of the crime novels I read, and it never ruins the story or makes me stop. I read for a lot of reasons, and the puzzle factor is last on the list. “Why?” intrigues me much more than the simple “Who?” ever will. Twisted reasoning, long-buried secrets, hidden rage that’s simmered for decades before boiling over – that’s the stuff I love, and even after I’ve figured out “who” I will stick around to learn the whole story behind the killer’s actions. Meanwhile, I enjoy knowing that the hero or heroine is misjudging this person. I like seeing the villain wiggle out of potentially disastrous situations, all the way up to the ultimate unveiling. Knowing who the killer is adds another, almost always enjoyable, dimension to the book for me.

Still, I realize most mystery readers want to be surprised, and I’m sure most writers fully intend to keep the villain’s identity under wraps until the end. So why do they often fail? The most likely answer is that writers are too close to their stories to see the flaws. An author thinks the villain is cleverly concealed and can’t see the obvious give-aways. (We might ask why an editor doesn’t spot the problem, but we’re not likely to get an answer.) Whatever the reason, authors make the same mistakes again and again.

Ask any mystery reader about the “new boyfriend” cliche and you’ll get a groan and a roll of the eyes. If the crime-solving heroine has a new love, and the guy does nothing but stand around being supportive or getting in the way, you can bet he’s the killer. (Linda Fairstein did a nice, wry twist on this theme in one of her books, but I won’t give the title and spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read the novel yet.) The same goes for any other character – if this person has no real reason to be in the story, just hovers around the edges or tries to insinuate himself into the investigation, he or she probably did it.

Many writing teachers advise authors to cast suspicion on the killer early on, then clear him or her in a convincing way so the reader will rule out that person as the villain. But today’s mystery readers, with their devious minds, have little trouble spotting this ploy. A guy’s been cleared before the story is one-third over? He must be guilty, and at some point his alibi will turn to dust and blow away.

Steering clear of PPS (Purposeless Character Syndrome) is the easiest way for a writer to avoid painting “I did it!” on the killer’s forehead. The villain who is hard to spot has a job in the story from the beginning. He’s can be touched personally by the crime or play a role in the crime-solving – but he’s not on the murder scene before anyone else shows up and doesn’t find supposedly valuable evidence, he’s not the one and only person who receives phone calls from the killer, he’s not obviously trying to misdirect the investigation. When the camera shifts to him, there’s a good reason and it seems to move the story forward.

But there aren’t any hard and fast rules. Concealing the villain’s identity until the end is tricky, no doubt about it, and what works on one reader may point a neon arrow at the killer in another’s mind. One story that had me fooled all the way through is P.J. Tracy’s Monkeewrench, and I thought the authors (a mother-daughter team) did a great job of misdirection. Usually, though, I don’t care if I guess the killer early. I can enjoy the book anyway.

Is this an important issue for you? If you guess the killer’s identity, do you feel deflated and enjoy the book less after that point? If any books have kept you baffled until the end, I’d love to know the titles. I’m always looking for something good enough to satisfy the merciless, bloodthirsty bunch in my mystery discussion group. Hasn’t happened yet, but there’s always a first time.