Villains

I've been reading Brad Smith lately. He's been called (maybe by his own publicist) a Canadian Elmore Leonard, and this is true. His books are funny, smart, full of off-the-wall characters, and they usually involve a scam.

 

He always has a John-Wayne-type hero, the guy who doesn't care much about money and who is at home in the physical world (he can roof his own house, including creating the beams and rafters instead of using those pre-constructed roof struts). His heroes are the last whole men. They're like Robert Parker's Spencer but not as smart-mouthed.

 

Smith's villains have made me think. His characters are the people he meets in dingy bars and cheap motels. Well, I don't ever meet people in dingy bars or cheap motels because I never frequent either of those places. Therefore, I don't have access to villains. So I began to search for the villains in my own life. A sorrier crew it would be hard to imagine, yet they are the only villains I come across. Here they are:

 

The people who don't respond to the good-citizen slogan of "Be nice! Clear your ice!" All winter long I pick my way carefully across the sidewalk frontage of frozen lumps and humps, part of me desperate to avoid falling, another part of me planning the lawsuit if I do. This is laziness and thoughtlessness as villainy.

 

The people who let their cars idle, filling our city air with even more particulates for us to inhale. At 6:45 one morning recently in High Park I came across an empty car, lights on and motor running. The owner was nowhere in sight but, since the car was parked by the entrance to the off-leash area, I assume he was walking his dog. I was sorely tempted to get in the car and drive it 50 yards down the road, just to give him a scare. I didn't, but real car thieves are less reluctant. (There is apparently a thriving trade in early-morning stolen cars. The thief and his accomplice drive to the suburbs. They circle the streets until they spot yet another shiny SUV spewing its poisonous exhaust into the air so that the owner will be able to enjoy the comfort of a pre-warmed car. The thief just hops into the unlocked car left running for him, and he drives it off to the chop shop.)

 

The people who block subway doors so that passengers can't get out. These people are usually just ignorant and thoughtless, wanting to be the first ones to enter the car. But some blockers are more deliberate. My husband recently shared the subway car for six stops with a short, fat man who deliberately stood in the middle of the doorway at each stop, making it almost impossible for riders to get on or off through that door. At first it might have looked accidental, just one more thoughtless person. But the man moved from one side of the subway car to the other, depending on which side the door would be opening onto. And he smirked as he blocked the way. What grudge against the world was this man acting out?

 

My current villains are all urban and all relatively harmless. I'm going to have to apply some serious imaginative effort to create villains to people my next mystery novel. Or just start hanging out at dingy bars and cheap motels.

 

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com