By Anna Scotti
Could you love—or even like—a man who pushed his two sons off a cliff?
No? Are you sure?
Well, of course you’re sure. No one wants to pal around with killers.
And that’s the challenge of writing a murder mystery. Our bad guys are by definition really bad; they’ve done pretty much the worst thing you can do. But if we write them too reprehensible, they become one-dimensional, even cartoonish, like Snidely Whiplash tying the delectable ingénue to the railroad tracks. Not only are cardboard villains boring, but it’s hard to keep a plot moving forward when we can identify the miscreants too early. For a story to achieve real depth, the bad guy—or gal—has to be believable, and even sympathetic.
Consider the relationship between Kevin Delman and Tristan Gates in “A Heaven or a Hell,” fourth story in the It’s Not Even Past collection. Tristan, fourteen, is a killer. He and a gang of friends murdered Delman’s brother, more or less for sport and some Wetzel’s Pretzels. What we don’t know is whether Delman pushed Tristan and his brother off a cliff in retribution, after accepting them into his home as foster sons, post-crime. Now, if you haven’t read the story, you may want to stop here, because I’m about to spill the tea.
No, on second thought, read on—because if the story is well-constructed, as you read it you will still be hoping that Kevin is a good guy, even though I just told you that he most assuredly is not. After all, our heroine is crushing on Kevin pretty hard. He’s a good-looking, suave, wealthy-but-unpretentious good kisser, and he’s the only person in Tristan’s sad life who has ever made him feel protected and loved. This guy is boyfriend material and then some. Except—oh, yeah. That.
At the climax of the story, Cam realizes the truth and is phoning the police, despite Tristan’s desperate pleas to “just leave us alone.” She can’t do that. Kevin is a very bad guy. You could even say he’s a monster. But there is no revelatory moment when Kevin turns his handsome face toward Cam and she sees the glint of evil in his eye. Not at all. He’s a killer, sure, but he genuinely likes Cam—and Tristan too, for that matter—and when he knows the jig is up he urges Cam, rather pathetically, “Please don’t be afraid of me.”
“A Heaven or a Hell” was selected for Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press, 2022), and as I remarked to publisher Otto Penzler at the time, If I’ve done my job well, readers will feel genuine sympathy for Kevin and for Tristan—cold-blooded killers, both.
Just as our protagonist is disappointed when she realizes Kevin is a killer, you, dear reader, should be disappointed, too. Logically, you know that Kevin pushed his kids off the cliff. If he didn’t, this story would not be a murder mystery; it would be the story of an unfortunate accident. Yet “Heaven” was a reader favorite, and no one has written to me yet claiming to have figured out the murderer before the dénoûement.
I have, however, received wistful emails wishing that Cam could have found love with Kevin, or that she could have stepped in as Tristan’s guardian when Kevin went to prison. And those poignant wishes tell me that I’ve made my bad guys multidimensional and somehow sympathetic. Because villains, just like the rest of us, are complicated. As the saying goes, even bad guys are more than the worst thing they’ve done.
