5 Thrilling Tales of Revenge

 One of my favourite passages in Cape Rage, my latest Danny Barrett novel, comes when one of the villains admits he is driven by revenge, and that revenge is a waste of time:

Henry Carter knew something about revenge long before he was shot in the back and left for dead; already knew it was the ugliest and most toxic of emotions, one capable of revealing itself in dead bodies even, so easy was it to spot those who had died by act of vengeance. Those bodies were the hardest to look upon. The most damaged. The least human.

 

He knew also that it is the most useless of emotions, the one that gives no reward. Greed gives comfort. Sex gives pleasure. Revenge gives nothing tangible; it is a hollow, end-of the-road emotion that cannot be sustained without the fantasies a vengeful person has constructed in their head.

 

Which also makes revenge the falsest of emotions, the one that puts us in opposition to the natural world, for we are the only animal that kills for revenge. Sex, greed, power — we share those. Revenge is ours. No other animal understands it. 

Yes, revenge may be useless in real life, but some great writers have used the emotion to write some memorable books. Here are five of my favourite revenge tales:

The Green Ripper

A unusual tale of revenge by one of my favourite mystery writers, John D. MacDonald.  What makes this revenge tale unusual? Here is a partial list: While MacDonald wrote some classic revenge tales (The Executioners, Deadly Welcome) this is the rare one with his genre-changing detective, Travis McGee, as the protagonist. It is also the only Travis McGee story that has McGee working undercover for most of the story. And it won a National Book Award in 1980 for ‘Best Hardcover Mystery Fiction.’ 

If that last fact has you scratching your head, it may be because 1980 was the only year the National Book Awards had ‘Best Hardcover Mystery Fiction’ as a category.

Blue City

Another great revenge tale from another Macdonald. The third Lew Archer novel first appeared under Ross Macdonald’s real name, Kenneth Millar, and received mixed reviews when it was released in 1947. Today, it is considered a Macdonald classic. The novel tells the story of John Weather, a young man returning from the European Theatre, only to learn his estranged father had been murdered two years earlier. As Weather tries to solve the murder, he learns most of his hometown is corrupt and may have been complicit in his father’s death. 

An interesting fact for this revenge tale—the 1986 movie adaptation of the book was so bad it is credited with single-handedly destroying the once A-list careers of Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and David Caruso.  It was also nominated for five Raspberry Awards—and lost each one.

Murder on the Orient Express

Any list of mystery revenge tales should include the Grand Dame’s masterpiece, a classic locked-room mystery that only Hercules Poirot could solve. While today Christie may be considered the penultimate “cozy” mystery writer, we should remember the audacity of this novel’s plot—every suspect was a vengeful, blood-thirsty murderer. Many a noir writer would have turned away from a narrative like that, thinking they had gone too far. Christie trudged on with pleasure.  

An interesting fact about the 1974 movie adaptation of this novel: while Albert Finney received an Oscar nomination for playing Poirot (and Ingrid Bergman picked up her third Oscar, for playing Greta Ohlssen) Christie didn’t much care for Finney’s portrayal. His mustache, she once complained to director Sidney Lumet, needed to be “much grander.”

The Cask of Amontillado

This short story by Edgar Allan Poe first appeared in 1846 (in a lady’s magazine, of all places) and the ensuing 176 years have done little to diminish the horror and dread one feels upon first reading this gothic tale. It tells the story of Montresor, a nobleman whose family has fallen on hard times, as he exacts his revenge on Fortunato, the nobleman he blames for his family’s reversal of fortunes. The story takes place in Italy, during Carnival, with Montresor as the narrator. Montresor tricks a drunken Fortunato into following him into the city’s catacombs, to sample a recent shipment of amontillado. Once there, Fortunato will be chained to a wall, a new wall bricked in front of him, and left to die. 

The conversation between the two men as they descend into the catacombs is chilling, the reader knowing what is happening, the victim not. Only at the end does the reader learn it happened 50 years ago. And at no point in the story does the reader learn what Fortunato did to deserve such a fate. So—was Montresor insane? Was the motive to be guessed at by the reader, from clues left by Poe? To this day, no one can say. A nearly two-century-old revenge tale that can still give you nightmares. 

The Executioners

I’ve already said John D. MacDonald is one of my favourite writers (we can drop the adjective “mystery”) so this list has two of the master’s novels. The Executioners has, in my opinion, a perfect revenge-plot, a perfect setting, and the perfect revenge-seeker—the unforgettable Max Cady. The plot is a simple one: small-town, Carolina lawyer Sam Bowden witnesses Cady committing a brutal rape and testifies against him in court. Cady is found guilty and sent to prison for fourteen years, where he spends every minute plotting his revenge against the eyewitness who put him behind bars. 

Once released, Cady begins stalking and threatening the Bowden family (Sam Bowden has a wife and three children, including a teenage daughter.) The threats escalate to attempted murder, and while Sam Bowden initially tries to solve his problem by legal means, he soon realizes it is futile. He must confront Cady on his terms. 

One of MacDonald’s most suspenseful and psychological books, The Executioners was made twice into a blockbuster Hollywood movie, the role of Max Cady given first to Robert Mitchum, then to Robert De Niro (not bad.) If this isn’t ringing a bell with you, Hollywood made some changes to the story, starting with shrinking the size of the Bowden family to husband, wife, and teenage daughter.

Hollywood also changed the name of the story, to one MacDonald himself came to like. You know the story better as Cape Fear.

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About Cape Rage by Ron Corbett:

The FBI has a hundred undercover agents who can work in the city, but Danny Barrett is the one they call when they need someone to investigate crimes in the wilderness.

This case is a particularly difficult one. For more than a century the Danby family have ruled as kings in their corner of the Pacific Northwest. The Feds were mostly willing to look the other way while the family smuggled everything from liquor to cigarettes across the border, but lately things have taken a darker turn.

A recent bank robbery in Seattle looks like it may have been committed by the Danbys, but there’s no way the FBI can get any locals to turn against them. Only Danny Barrett has what it takes to get inside the organization and shut them down.

But before Danny can do that he’s going to have to contend with Henry Carter, a former in-law and current psychopath. The Danbys thought they left Henry for dead in the deepest part of the woods, but he’s coming back. He’ll go to hell to get his revenge, and he’s willing to take the whole family with him.