Crime is a genre with a lot of unsavory characters, so its natural to have a few bad apples in your cast. But what about when your MC is the worst of them all? My (comic) script is about a guy who works as a middleman for assassins and their clients. Its only five pages into my script, and already he's suggested child pornography as the solution to another character's problems (half-jokingly, sure, but that's not how the other character took it). Do you worry about making your MC too much of a bad guy? Or do you just let him (or her) be evil to their black heart's content?

My MC isn't that evil, but he's not the guy I thought he was when I started to write. I had originally thought that he was a good guy, who didn't do anything wrong, but, a few pages in, he tells me that he's a high ranker in a crime ring, has organized a couple of assassinations, and plans to hijack a plane in the next few years, or in a while, whenever commercial flights start becoming a bigger thing. So, I'm letting him be the way he wants to be, if it means that my story goes the way it shout, and, seeing as I'm 64 in, I'm thinking it is a good plan.

Careful! Making your MC too awful also increases the likelihood that he will be viewed as comedic. If that's your purpose go full speed, if not you may want to tone it down by thinking about something good about him.

I remember reading a James Lee Burke crime novel once and the Baddie is so bad that at one point another character makes the observation that the Baddie loves music and therefore couldn't possibly be all bad. I thought that comment was so amusing, I remembered it.

"It's never too late to become what you might have been."
- George Eliot

My MC is totally appalling, but I don't reveal that until the end. He seems like a nice guy that start to suspect has a secret, but it turns out to be horrible. Originally I was going to alternate viewing him from the outside and from his POV, but I'm glad I didn't chose to reveal this until the end so he doesn't seem comically terrible and it gives a twist and leaves you with something to think about. (Like the Sixth Sense; everyone thought back or watched it again to see all the clues that he was dead... I'm leaving clues that he's a bad guy.)

P.S. James Lee Burke writes some great baddies, and some great good-bad guys. I just finished another Robicheaux novel, maybe that's what put it in my head!
~Katharine