Rooting for the bad guy

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

All crime fiction has a protagonist and at least one antagonist. Quite often, the antagonist is the most interesting character. What makes them do the things they do? Sometimes our sympathy is with the bad guys at least to some extent. We don’t support their crimes, but we understand why they feel forced to commit them and wish there was a way out for them.

Deon Meyer is one of South Africa's top crime writers. I’m a big fan of his Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido thrillers, and it’s great news that his latest book, Leo, is now available in the US. Not only is it up to Deon’s usual standard, but this one won the prize for Best Adult Fiction at the South African Book Awards last year and was also SA Book of the Year. Publishers Weekly pigeon-holed it with his usual books, writing, “This intelligent page-turner confirms Meyer’s reputation as a master of the police procedural”.

In fact, Deon’s not so sure this is a police procedural, and at least half the book is from the viewpoints of the bad guys – characters engaged in two massive robberies. What’s more, we’re rooting for at least one of them, Chrissie Jaeger, a woman with a complicated past and unclear objectives, who is a key player in both heists.

Deon Meyer

In his piece What really defines the subgenres of crime? (https://crimereads.com/deon-meyer-leo/) Deon used a helpful AI system, Claude, and came to this conclusion:

“Leo probably is heist/caper fiction, amongst other things. But eventually, neither clever system Claude nor the vast amount of information I gathered during the interaction, changed my basic philosophy: focus on the story. Make it captivating. And let other people worry about its place on the ever-extending genre family tree.”

Fair enough.

In parallel, detectives Griessel and Cupido are trying to break what seems to be another case altogether. Deon loves parallel plots. He explains it like this:

“We all write the books we’d like to read, and I love books with lots of things going on. When I start writing a book and I get these ideas, I think: it will be cool if they connect. Each must be strong enough and have a convincing conclusion to be satisfying. You have to be very careful not to force it and lose credibility. But if it does happen, it can give an extra little thrill.”

It certainly happens in Leo. Chrissie and her partners discover a stash of money in a secure warehouse belonging to criminals involved in the South African state capture corruption, and they set out to steal it. It seems a victimless crime and a pretty safe one since no one can afford to involve the police. What could possibly go wrong?

Beautiful Stellenbosch mountains where much of Leo is set
Photo Deon Meyer

Some months later, Griessel and Cupido are investigating the death of a young woman who was biking in the mountains near Stellenbosch. It seems that her death wasn’t deliberate, but resulted from an attack by dogs belonging to a jogger who tried to cover it up. Then the jogger is killed by a professional hit team but no one knows why. His sister suspects she knows the answer, but wants to keep it to herself and two of her brother’s associates. As the murders mount, the loop closes, and Chrissie and her team see the chance of a heist much bigger even than the not-so-successful first one.

The escape plane. Or did it?
Photo Deon Meyer

One wants Crissie to get away with her share of the loot so that she can live her dream and retire to her small apartment in an Italian village and help a kind friend there start a restaurant. And she has two stray cats to support. Yes, it’s a crime and yes, people get hurt, but they are not nice people. Deon carefully constructs this ambivalence, leaving it to the reader to decide whether they want to see her caught or not. If you want to find out, you'll have to read the book.

Do you have a favorite antagonist? One you wanted to get away?