November is a new month for guestposts with an exciting new topic! M. A. Granovsky comes to speak her piece on Villains.
DECENT PEOPLE DOING EVIL THINGS
Stories about supervillains are of not much interest to me. A supervillain who is evil through and through faces no choices – he or she will always do harm.
I am far more interested in how regular folk, you and me, make the decisions that we make in circumstances where the consequences of our choices cannot be predicted with certainty.
In my recently released legal thriller, POISON PILL, the protagonists, Benedict Vickers and Olga Mueller, break the law and engage in actions they know are likely to hurt innocent bystanders. Yes, they are trying to save lives, but their motives are not all pure, and there’s more than a little vengeance and comeuppance in their chosen method of achieving their goals.
Are they heroes because they want to help some people, or villains because they want to destroy others?
Conversely, one of the antagonists, Peter Gardiner, a venture capitalist, has knowledge of the catastrophic events that are most likely to happen if he follows the business path he had chosen. Yet these catastrophic events won’t occur for a few years, and there’s enough fuzziness in the data to allow plausible deniability – enough to convince himself that his acts will not lead to a calamity certain.
His is a sin of omission. By not changing his course, he is allowing harm to befall unknown others, people who are nameless and faceless to him.
Peter is not operating in a vacuum. He is facing pressures that reinforce his choice. He is managing billions in investor money and his investors want big returns. That’s what his able stewardship has conditioned them to expect.
His fame and reputation rest largely on an almost uncanny ability to pick winning startup companies. If he were to do the right thing in view of what might happen down the road, he’d have to admit that he made a mistake in his picking, and perhaps even have a losing year. Investors are an unforgiving lot, and his venture funds may collapse.
Moreover, what if the catastrophic events that are very likely to happen don’t? What if he causes all these losses to his investors, as well as the collapse of a wonderful startup, for no reason?
So, for Peter, the risk in doing the wrong thing is somewhere in the misty future, while the risk in doing the right thing is immediate and very painful. Despite being a fundamentally good person, he chooses to do the wrong thing.
Does this make him a villain? I don’t know, and it seems to be the question my readers are grappling with, too. It’s a conversation I often have about POISON PILL.
As the creator of all these characters (who often feels more like a reporter as these characters come to life, do things, and I just scramble to write them down), I know that I set out to make Olga and Benedict the good guys and Peter the bad guy. It is rewarding to hear from readers that the lines blur and that they all come out looking more or less grey.
In their quest, Olga and Benedict face inconveniences and downright danger. Peter originally doesn’t. I’d like to think that faced with the choices confronting them, I would act as my protagonists do. But I’m not sure. I don’t know whether I have their courage or the cowardice that makes decent people do evil things.
About Maria:
Maria Granovsky uses her background as a cancer biologist and lawyer, and her international travels, to craft fast-paced, intricately plotted capers, where the protagonists rely on their wits rather than their brawn, and the body count rises only as much as is necessary. She currently lives in New York City, but has lived in many other places, from the exotic (Wilmington, Delaware), to the normal (St. Petersburg, Jerusalem), to the entertaining (Florence — in a convent). While it’s difficult to be the new kid on the block repeatedly, this nomadic existence – in terms of geography and career – continues to yield a rich vein of thriller plots.
Maria’s Twitter handle is @MGranovsky
See Maria’s blog
See Maria’s blog
Coming up in this series:
November 12
Massimo Marino, author of Daimones
November 16, 17, & 18
~~The Ups and Downs of Being Dead is free on Amazon~~
November 19
M.R. Cornelius, author of The Ups and Downs of Being Dead
November 26
Nephylim, author of Enigma
