Starter Villain was published by Tor in the latter half of a ten-year contract with John Scalzi. Signed in 2015, the contract stipulated a thirteen-book deal with an advance worth $3.4 million dollars. The publishers were evidently pleased with this arrangement because they signed another deal with Scalzi in 2024 for another ten books. Starter Villain won a prize and its subject matter widened Scalzi’s fan base. I mean, until this year Scalzi was not within the scope of my reading choices. Scalzi has been doing what any professional writer is meant to do for their publisher. He is popular and has earned them money. Nothing wrong with that!

To be cynical, though, one might presume Scalzi’s fiction appeals wildly because it is simple to read, makes few demands of its readers and engages its audience with popular tropes. True, I’m basing this all on one book. At least, that all could be said of Starter Villain. You don’t sign $3.4 million dollar deals by writing experimental novels. Think James Bond, Doctor Evil and any number of silly movies in which villains wish to take over the world for whatever reason, stated or not, and you at least know the premise.

Although that’s not exactly how the novel begins. Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist and lately a substitute teacher, has crushing financial problems and distant siblings who co-own the house in which he lives. They aren’t keen on his plan to use the money from the sale of the house to fulfil his dream: to buy a pub and restaurant. He lives with his two cats, Hera and Persephone, who seem to have adopted him, and he has just been turned down for a business loan. As escapist novels go, the opening doesn’t exactly fulfil any fantasies, and you have to be patient for the first two chapters until Mathilda Morrison, Uncle Jake’s assistant, turns up on Charlie’s doorstep to inform him that his Uncle Jake has died and that he, Charlie, is the benefactor of a business empire. As a side note, Charlie jokingly says to Morrison that it would be tremendous if his uncle had left him $3.4 million dollars, an amount Morrison observes to be “a very specific number”. Of course, it is the value of the first contract Scalzi signed with Tor, so it seems Scalzi likes his little in-jokes. But Charlie’s inheritance is valued higher. Jake was worth billions, Charlie is told, and Charlie has inherited his uncle’s business interests. Jake is said to have made his fortune from a parking lot empire.

Jake, long estranged from his brother, Charlie’s father, has no offspring or other relatives. It seems there is no-one else but Charlie to inherit Jake’s fortune. Morrison, who outlines all this for Jake, has a request. It was his uncle’s desire that he attend his funeral and accept condolences as a family member and speak on behalf of Jake. Except, at the funeral the only mourners present seem to be underworld figures who have turned up to make sure Uncle Jake really is dead . . . this time. One of them even tries to stab his corpse to be sure.

None of this is to be taken too seriously. Charlie has to, of course, but as readers we get to sit back and snigger at Charlie’s dilemmas and the ridiculous world the villains have made for themselves. This is a fun novel, after all. There is nothing here to tax the grey cells. Your only responsibility when you open Starter Villain is to find a comfy spot, open the book and enjoy it. My copy has an image of a villainous character seated in a large villain’s chair and stroking a cat in the manner of Blofeld, played by Donald Pleasance in You Only Live Twice, and parodied by Mike Myers as Dr Evil in the Austen Powers movies. The cover tells you everything you need to know about the tropes and iconography the book is drawing from, although little about the putative ‘starter’ villain, Charlie, who is a fish out of water for a good deal of this book as he tries to negotiate his way through the world of the Lombardy Convocation, a group of villainous villains who are pressuring him to join their collective – apparently his uncle always refused – and to cough up an enormous buy-in fee, while at the same time avoiding being inconveniently killed.

Scalzi’s humour is situational and generally works because he pushes the common tropes of super-spy stories to their ridiculous limits. Mike Myers knew the importance of this when he had his Dr Evil demand a pool of “sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads” which are way less cool than he supposed when he finally gets them. Scalzi’s humour is on a similar wavelength. Instead of sharks and lasers, Scalzi delivers dolphins with industrial demands. The only way to approach this is to undermine the whole pretence of supervillainy until it is belittled by its own quotidian realities. For Dr Evil, this might come from his inability to kill a disappointing employee by dropping them from their chair into a fiery pit, without their plaintive calls undercutting the coolness of his evil moment. Or the story cutting away from the exciting action of despatching redshirt henchmen to witness the tragic news of their deaths being delivered to their families. Scalzi does much the same by undermining the infallible supervillain persona by enmeshing his bad guys in the quotidian problems of finance and their petty rivalries; about as pathetic as Donald Trump in charge of a casino. The supervillain world is neither glamorous nor its participants driven by ideology or any intelligent plan. It is a world predicated on greed and ego.

The dolphins, along with super-villain cats (they seem de jour in the supervillain community) are what earns this book a science fiction classification as well. Without giving too much away, a book that features dolphins that can make industrial demands is the kind of book where you can imagine some weird shit happening with cats, too. I wasn’t going to mention it – to avoid spoilers – until I saw another version of the cover featuring a cat in a suit, and it’s pretty clear that on some level, that animal is in charge.

So, Scalzi’s Starter Villain is, on some level, a satirical takedown of the espionage tropes: a light mocking of the form itself for a bit of fun. If it has anything serious to suggest about our world, it is merely a general feeling that things are being run by interests who do not align with our own and by means which do not align with the law, and with little to no accountability. But even that is taking things too seriously, here. Our moral compass on this journey is Charlie, and he shows himself to be somewhat adept at handling villainy, with comic results. The book’s subtitle, ‘Anti-Hero in Training’ is really not accurate. Charlie may not really know what he is doing, but the title suggests a level of complicity that Charlie is not willing to give. Anyway, we really just want to see bad guys looking foolish, and Charlie’s capable enough, despite his résumé, to get that done.

If you wanted something more serious for your satirical buck, you might check out Percival Everett’s Dr. No, instead. But Everett will demand you think about the absurdity of what he produces and leave you drawing connections between the plot and the real world of America. It’s a brilliant book, but you’re here to snuggle in for a good read, to take things lightly, engage in a bit of fantasy, so take Starter Villain off the shelf and delve in.

As a bonus, at least in the edition I read, there is a short story that follows Scalzi’s Afterword, featuring a financial trader, Caleb Trude, who has no idea how a seemingly inexperienced trader is helping him to establish his own career on a firm footing. That may sound a little tedious, but in the context of the main story, it is quite amusing, and you’re in on the joke. It’s like an after-credit scene from a Marvel movie: giving you just a little bit more because Scalzi knows you’re not quite willing to leave your seat just yet.