Reading Stephen Dobyns’ Boy in the Water, which has, along with the usual “victim turned villain” bad guy, an entirely less usual type in the form of Fritz Skander, a polished backstabber of the Iago school. I read the first scene in which his MO is revealed to the reader with at first bewilderment and then a real frisson – because at first I thought “blundering idiot, he’s scaring her with his reassurances and he can’t see it” and then I realised “he knows exactly what he’s doing – o-mi-god”. From then on, I was more apprehensive when he got the other characters alone – some of whom were very vulnerable, and all of whom thought of him as a nice guy – than the “real” bad guy, who was just another miserable psycho. What’s more, you’re never in his mind. He is written completely transparently, revealing himself through speech that is on the surface deeply sympathetic, but whose subtext plays upon people’s insecurity and guilt. And that’s craft.