Features “It wasn’t too pleasant knowing you were making stocks for prison camp inmates or testing the Kutuzov or Homer eyepunches (on mannequins, of course). Next thing you know, they’d be inventing a portable wall for executions.” —“Annus Mirabilis (Anus Horribilis),” by Aleksey Lukyanov From the Speculative Fiction special section starting on page 42. above Duo I, 2013, oil on canvas by Andre Schulze Courtesy of the artist/andreschulze.com WORLDLIT.ORG 11 W hat is crime fiction about? One glib answer is the struggle between good and evil. As light is defined by darkness, there is no hero without the counterpush of an opposing character. The Greeks left us the terms “protagonist” and “antagonist” from their word for “actor” (agon), with the “protagonist” being the primary actor, and the “antagonist” being the opposing. In most stories, the protagonist is “good” in the sense that Aristotle describes in his Poetics, not saintly or morally pure— Aristotle was not a Christian—but making choices the audience would interpret as the proper ones. Consider the brilliant classic “A Jury of Her Peers,” by Susan Glaspell. A group of women conceal the fact that their friend, abused by her husband, murdered him. By the time we reach the story’s conclusion, we generally agree with their decision and have come to view the sheriff as an antagonist. The women are not doing “good,” in the conventional sense, but the sheriff is certainly not “evil.” His choices, as a man and a representative of the law, show us his blindness to the emotional cruelties inflicted on the wife for many years. Her suffering justifies the difficult choice to remain silent, and readers, with perhaps some reticence, agree. In most crime stories, the choices are not nearly as ambiguous. Sherlock Holmes is on the side of God and the Crown, but we wouldn’t in the usual sense think of him as “good.” He’s a cocaine addict, he shoots holes in his apartment’s walls, and he seems to have little or no respect for “inferior” people. He Where Is a Bad Guy When You Really Need One? Antagonists and Master Criminals by J. Madison Davis crime & mystery In most crime stories, the choices are not nearly as ambiguous. Sherlock Holmes is on the side of God and the Crown, but we wouldn’t in the usual sense think of him as “good.” 12 WLT MAY–JUNE 2018 treats the steadfast Watson—a wounded veteran and a physician—like a King Charles spaniel there to amuse him. Yet Holmes and his readers face little anguish in his choices. Something bad is afoot and he will end it. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe often exhibits a rueful sympathy for petty criminals and other moral “small stuff,” but there is never any question about the big stuff. Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon, faces an agonizing choice between love or justice. Knowing how much Sam loves Brigid, the reader becomes afraid that Sam isn’t strong enough to make the proper choice. It comes as a relief that he makes the painful, but right, choice. He’s not even able to articulate well why he does this, but we like him, even admire him, for choosing what we hope we would have the strength to choose in similar circumstances . The antagonist, in fact, does not need to make choices that the audience finds “not good.” He or she merely needs to hinder the “good” choices of the protagonist . By opposing the protagonist, for any motive, an antagonist fulfills the dramatic function. Aristotle controversially wrote that character is in service of the plot. You might have a play without character, he says, but never one without plot. It is one of the most attacked things he wrote, and yet think of all the entertainments you have enjoyed that are largely “characterless.” A good guy, a bad guy, and a series of events leading to a conclusion—it’s certainly the essence of most murder mysteries. This is not to say that the highest quality of literature gives us characters without complexity or complication (“depth” if you prefer), but white hat/ black hat conflicts are the...