Two works from Alfred Bester come to mind. The main character in The Demolished Man (Ben Reich) is a mentally unstable person fixated on committing murder. Any Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination is a “monomaniacal and sophisticated monster bent upon revenge.”
Of the two I guess Foyle is the more sympathetic, but still, both are undoubtedly criminals and villains.
I read a couple of short stories once, and I think it was in a volume of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, but I’ve never been able to find it.
In the first, all I can remember is that the villain hides the murder weapon in the toilet tank…he thinks he’s clever, and the cops come in and say “Check the toilet tank. That’s always the first place they hide it.”
In the other, the narrator hides bodies for the mob. It ends with him going into hiding because the dump he hides them in is going to be excavated so an apartment building can be constructed there.
If we are including collections of short histories there books that collect the short tales of Edgar Allan Poe, he liked to make tales from the point of view of the criminals. Look for collections that have classics like The Tell-Tale Heart and the Cask of Amontillado.
Then there’s DeSade’s Juliette, or the Rewards of Vice, where essentially every character who makes it through the book alive is a criminal of the greatest depravity (then again that’s partly the point he was making in between all the sex-crime scenes, namely that the ruling classes of his time could literally get away with murder).
Am I the first to mention Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me? Pretty much a classic of the type.
Not to mention Double Indemnity.
Reading through this thread, there seem to be lots of books where the protagonist is a villain, but very few in which the protagonist is the villain. “The villain” is almost a synonym for antagonist, and everyone’s the hero of their own story. Flashy or Locke Lamora are certainly criminals, and Flashy’s a cad, and they’re certainly “the villain” if you happen to be someone who crosses them or a mark, but I don’t think either of them would think of themselves that way (except to the extent “villain” is a synonym for criminal or cad).
No, but it would be helpful if the OP would clarify what he’s looking for: a book from the perspective of a bad/evil/criminal character, a book from the perspective of an established character traditionally regarded as the villain, or a book told from the perspective of a character who’s the antagonist of the story’s main character or hero?
That last one seems like it would be tricky to pull off, but one book already mentioned in this thread may qualify. It’s an Agatha Christie mystery told from the perspective of the killer, but for most of the book the narrator plays innocent even for the reader. Until you get to the twist it seems like a fairly typical Christie mystery, in which Detective Poirot’s investigation is observed by a supporting character who was not involved with the crime. Poirot is the hero of many of Christie’s novels, so this is arguably a case of the narrator as antagonist. I’ll spoiler the title: The Murder of Roger AckroydChristie wrote another novel from the perspective of the killer where again you don’t learn until the end that the narrator is the murderer, but IIRC most of this book is not about the investigation and the detective who solves the crime is not one of Christie’s recurring heroes. So I’d consider this other book just an example of a story from the perspective of a bad/criminal person. The title of this one is: Endless NightA “traditional villain tells their side of the story” book that I don’t believe has been mentioned yet is Mary Stewart’s The Wicked Day, from the perspective of Mordred. Another Arthurian retelling is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, much of which is from the perspective of Morgana le Fay.
This is what I came in here to post. The previous books had Satan as an antagonist and this one retells all the stories from Satan’s point of view.
After reading some reviews I’ll be buying that.
It also brought to mind Michelle Lovric’s The Book Of Human Skin, set later, largely in Venice, in which the main character and sometime narrator is the Villain/Anti-Hero.
One I forgot:
Horace Silver’s Judas Pig… although a lot of people think it as non-fiction dressed up as fiction.
I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President, from the YA fiction world. Well. he’s only 12, but clearly a traditional villain.
The day of the jackal.
Along these lines, the one I can think of where the protagonist is the villain, it would be quite a spoiler to say so, because you don’t find out till the end of the book. For this reason: He’s either pretending to be the victim of his own crime, or has actually gone insane and convinced himself he is said victim.
It’s not the same one The Other Waldo Pepper referred to, but it’s by an author mentioned in this thread for another of his books.
Author in this Spoiler Tag.
Iain M. Banks
Title in this Spoiler Tag.
Use of Weapons.
Frederick Forsyth’s novel isn’t told exclusively from the Jackal’s viewpoint. Forsyth switches his POV around in a way that would have a Creative Writing teacher pulling his/her hair out, but which works very well. He gives you the Point of View of Claude Lebel, of the OAS officers, of random guards and French officials, and of Winston Churchill.
Hope no one has posted this (I’m at work and due back in two minutes) but *Elmer Gantry *by Sinclair Lewis
The central character was the nun, not the killer. Unless you’re thinking of a different film with a similar title.
The Wolf’s Story: What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood
I’m surprised no one so far has mentioned “Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis.
At least, it did not show up on a page search. I’m pressed for time at a public library PC.
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oats. It’s an unsettling book.
Yep, realised that this morning when I was thinking of what a villain really is.
Although I will say, as you said as well, that if you’re their mark their actions are evil.