Setting the Stage: Are Our Favourite Villains Actually Directors? | Jessica Holme

We often talk about great villains in terms of intelligence, cruelty, or motive. But there’s

another quality, less obvious, more unsettling, that links some of the most memorable figures in crime fiction. They don’t just commit crimes. They stage them.

What if our favourite villains are not just criminals, but directors?

Take Professor Moriarty, from The Final Problem. Moriarty is rarely seen, yet his presence

shapes everything. Like a director working from the wings, he controls movement, timing,

and outcome without stepping into the spotlight. His crimes are not isolated acts but

orchestrations, carefully arranged sequences designed to outmanoeuvre Sherlock Holmes. What makes Moriarty compelling is not simply that he is brilliant, but that he understands the importance of structure. He builds a narrative the detective must follow, even as he hides behind it.

In Gone Girl, Amy Dunne takes this idea further. Amy doesn’t just direct events. She directs

the story itself. Her disappearance is scripted with precision: diary entries planted, evidence curated, public perception carefully manipulated. She anticipates not only the investigation, but the audience watching it unfold. Police, media, even the reader, we are all cast in roles within her performance. Amy understands something fundamental about storytelling: if you control the narrative, you control reality. Her crime is as much about authorship as it is about violence.

But not all villains direct with such clarity.

In In the Woods by Tana French, the murderer, Rosalind Devlin, offers a striking contrast.

There is no elaborate staging, no performance designed to mislead. Her crime is quiet, almost disturbingly ordinary. And yet, the story still feels shaped directed, even. The difference is that the “direction” comes not from the villain, but from elsewhere: memory, trauma, and the narrator’s own omissions. The investigation unfolds like a play where key scenes have been cut, or rewritten after the fact. Rosalind Devlin exists outside that framework. She does not construct a performance; she exists within one already shaped by others. The “stage” is still here, but no one is fully in control of it.

The most theatrical villain among them understand how to manipulate not just events, but

perception how to place clues like props, how to time revelations, how to guide the audience toward the wrong conclusion. But others remind us that not every crime is staged with intention. Sometimes the illusion comes from the way stories are told, rather than the way crimes are committed.

Perhaps that’s the real answer: not every villain is a director, but every crime story is still,

inevitably, a performance.

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Jessica is a Creative Writing master’s student documenting her journey through the craft of storytelling. On her Substack, she shares reflections and insights from her studies, original creative pieces, and interviews with writers about their craft and creative process. You can follow her work here: https://substack.com/@jpholme