Creating a Villain

I'm knee-deep in creating a villain--perhaps the creepiest one I have ever written. He also needs to have the most depth because he is the villain of a trilogy called THE GEMINI CONSPIRACY, and if I reveal too much right away--or worse, if he seems like a stock villain--then why read books two and three? He has to be really evil, but he has to be three-dimensional.

That's the problem, I think, with some villains. Authors will, for instance, devise sicker and more twisted ways for a serial killer to commit murder. More torture, bloodshed, whatever. But to me, the scariest villains are ones I get to know. Perhaps they seem perfectly normal on the outside. Or perhaps their logic is completely twisted--and yet . . . and yet . . . there's a little bit of understanding of that psyche in all its horror.

The men in THE ROOFER commit some hard-core murders. They laugh about it. They don't ever feel regret. But Ava writes, about her murderous father:

Perhaps all this story needs is context. That is what I tell myself. For isn't it all funny? If I tell the stories just right--with the right inflections, the wittiest dialogue--they are. It wasn't until I met people whose fathers obeyed the law that I understood what I thought was funny was really something else.

I thought all I needed was to place this within a history. To help people understand that what seems like anarchy was really survival. My father was a boy bitten by rats. A young man who grew up with the aura of the Westies--New York's Irish gang--and gangland murders drifing over his life like a heavy smog hovering over the city. A man who felt it was all right to push someone in front of a bus or run over a sergeant. . . . .

Context. That is what villains need, in my opinion. It doesn't make the murder excusable. Or even understandable, but the why--at least in the context of rage or madness or survival instincts--is answered.

In my new book, the villain is a scientist who lost his way. Who moved toward eugenics while believing what he was doing was right. He is frightening for his fanaticism.

What do you think goes into the best villains. Is it context? Something more? The sickest crimes? Or the most understandable reasons? Who is your favorite villain?