The Oxford Book of Villains

From the esteemed author of Rumpole of the Bailey comes this unabashedly subjective but nonetheless comprehensive sampling of literary presentations of evil. In brief passages, many not more than a page in length, we encounter such characters as Bram Stoker's sharp-toothed assassin Count Dracula; read Harry Lime's ruminations on the profit motive in war-torn Vienna (from Graham Greene's The Third Man ); are reintroduced to the incomparably wicked inventions of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare; and are led all the way back to the Book of Genesis and Cain's murder of Abel. Eschewing chronology, Mortimer has arranged this assemblage of real and fictional bad 'uns into such categories as ``Seducers and Cads,'' ``Murderers'' and ``Con Men.'' Readers would do well to dip casually into the chapters, but should make sure not to miss P. G. Wodehouse's humorous take on Chicago-style organized crime (from Do Butlers Burgle Banks? ) or the big-shot wannabe from Raymond Chandler's The High Window. As rendered by Dostoevsky and Dick Francis, by Cicero, Chaucer and Conrad, these villains, while representing only ``a drop in the ocean of bad behavior,'' according to Mortimer, together make up a vast and varied array of literary wickedness. (Nov.)