It has to be said. I'm over the "over the top" villain.
This thought has been meandering around in my brain for the last few months. Triggered undoubtedly by the range of books I've been reading recently.
Personally I find nothing particularly sinister or clever or enlightening in the idea that, in order to be a perpetrator of a crime, that person must be overtly "evil", glaringly sinister, lurking around in dark alleys and behind trees, slathering, mumbling, muttering, barking mad, horrible, scary beyond all belief, "weird".
To me, there's nothing particularly sinister in the overt. Maybe I read too many versions of the Hunchback of Notre Dame as a child or something - but bleah. I think it's too easy to just stick the good guys in a white hat and the bad guys in a black hat, and have everyone ride off into the sunset (yep - I hated Western movies when I was a kid as well!)
I don't mind the idea of the serial killer book even, and I certainly don't mind the idea of villains who are malicious and use forethought - what I am really start to get cheesed off the back teeth over is that idea that the villain is overtly sinister.
Give me sinister by intimation rather than illustration any day.